By Lucienne Burns | February 24, 2025
The new Plasma Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition system in the Innovation Lab at CNSE.
Photo Credit: Patrick Dodson /University At Albany
Even though the materials are too small to see, the possibilities for research with the new atomic layering technology in the Innovation Lab at UAlbany’s College of Nanotechnology, Science and Engineering (CNSE) seem endless.
Recently a Plasma Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition system, more commonly referred to as a PE-ALD system, was installed at the Innovation Lab at UAlbany’s College of Nanotechnology, Science and Engineering (CNSE) campus in late January 2025.
CNSE received the atomic layering system through UAlbany’s Center of Advanced Technology in Nanomaterials and Nanoelectronics (CATN2), as part of a $10 million investment to install and improve technology at the Innovation Lab, according to a report from the university.
The PE-ALD system can produce different devices or microchips that can be useful for different purposes. It gives students and faculty using the Innovation Lab a chance to experiment and research things at the atomic scale.
The newly installed tech can be useful for several areas of research, according to CNSE professor Christophe Vallée, who says that every scientist could use it for something different.
“It depends on the needs, for example, of the people from different groups,” Vallée said. “Some people are working on quantum computing, some people are working on morphic computing, I’m working on processing. So I'm more working on using the tool to develop new innovative processes.”
Using the PE-ALD technology is a complex process, but one that is not a challenge for the students and staff at CNSE, who have already become accustomed to the tool and how to operate it.
All of the equipment in the Innovation Lab operates so that the wafers involved in the atomic processes can be up to 200 millimeters, according to the university’s website detailing the Innovation Lab, and the new PE-ALD system has the same millimeter requirement.
“It is not difficult as we are used to this process, but there were no plasma enhanced tools in the 200 millimeter Innovation Lab, so we bought it,” said Vallée, speaking about the new system and its purchase.
One of the things the tool can do is produce devices that imitate brain synapses, something that could be useful when investigating AI technology or simply viewing brain function at an atomic level.
“What I can say is every device you want to develop, like a quantum device or like a memory device – to mimic the brain, for example – neuromorphic computing, any device you want to develop needs to be fabricated based on matter,” Vallée said.
William Grice, a 22-year-old nanoscale engineering M.S. student at CNSE, believes that the PE-ALD system prompts him and his colleagues to investigate a broad range of topics through an atomic and detailed lens.
“Imagine we're looking at a kind of microscopic, or, rather, nanoscopic, workshop where we can build films atom by atom,” Grice said. “We're not just depositing thin films; we're actively exploring the fundamental reaction mechanisms at play.”
The size of the material used in the technology is a reason why the newly-installed PE-ALD technology at the Innovation Lab gives a big advantage to research there.
“You need this type of process tool,” Vallée said. “It's the only tool that can give you such a perfect composition.”
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