Purdue University is extremely serious about being a leader in nanotech and they are putting serious money into that goal. They’ve just opened a new nanofabrication cleanroom that sounds unique: combining the usual semiconductor capabilities with nanobio work, in cleanrooms that connect to each other. This sounds very handy for cool cross-disciplinary R&D. From the press release at Nanotechnology Now:
The Birck Nanotechnology Center at Purdue University on Monday (June 12) opened its $10 million Scifres Nanofabrication Laboratory to researchers…Initially, 44 faculty members and nearly 200 researchers and graduate students will use the $58 million Birck Nanotechnology Center, many working in the cleanroom and related laboratories. The Discovery Park cleanroom provides two types of research space:
• The particle-free environment needed for fabricating microscale and nanoscale devices.
• The biological-pharmaceutical-grade environment needed for work with pathogen-detecting biochips and other biological nanotechnology.…The 187,000-square-foot Birck Nanotechnology Center, which opened Oct. 8, involves Purdue faculty, researchers, staff members and graduate students from 27 schools and departments.
When the Birck Center is fully operational by October, the facility will have a staff of 300 nanotechnology researchers addressing everything from super-small computers, spacecraft and microscopic machines to tiny life-saving medical devices and a plethora of new materials.
The heck with their football team, the Boilermakers: go Purdue Nanotech! —Christine
