Centre to create nanotechnologies

The Southampton Nanofabrication Centre, which opens on 9 September, will, it is claimed, make smaller, more powerful nano and bio-nanotechnologies possible, saving industry time and money.

A key feature of the centre, which is housed in Southampton University’s Mountbatten Building and is one of Europe's leading multi-disciplinary and clean-room complexes, is the new Focused Ion Beam (FIB) system from Zeiss, which will make it possible to repair faulty chip circuits.

According to Dr Harold Chong from the Nano Group at the university's School of Electronics and Computer Science, the FIB will make it possible for researchers to view cross sections of materials in fine detail, thus enabling the repair of chip circuits in microscopic dimensions.

'This will save a great deal of project management time,' said Chong. 'There is great potential to work with universities and industry to fabricate micro-nano devices and possibly salvage damaged circuits. One potential use of the FIB is to carry out fast prototyping and to develop smaller, faster and more powerful single-electron devices.’