Nanofabrication Facility Fees
The CHM Nanofabrication Laboratory, managed by the MassNanoTech Institute, provides a range of
material fabrication services to support nanoscale scientific experiments, operating in a clean room
located in B-125 Conte and other smaller clean room environments in the Conte building.
ACCESS FEE
For UMass users the Access Fee will be charged as an annual lump-sum fee of $1200. Other academic
user groups outside the university will be charged $1500 per year. For non- academic users, the Access
Fee will be charged as an annual lump-sum fee of $2500. The access fee will include the monthly user fee
for one user. We ask that the minimum rotation period for a user be at least three months.
MONTHLY USER FEE
For UMass users the Monthly User Fee will be $60, for other academic users it will be $75, and for
industrial users it will be $95. Mandatory training on safety and general clean room practices will be
provided for all users. Individuals who have completed basic training will be “certified” to work in the
lab, and their identification will be loaded onto the lab’s card access system and to the online reservation
system. This fee will be used to defray lab costs for consumables such as gowning supplies, solvents and
chemicals, photolithograhic supplies, and process gases . Additional training on specific equipment or
processes can be requested if and when the users need it and that training is also covered by this fee.
EQUIPMENT USAGE FEES
The facility is organized to provide access to specific lithographic, deposition, and other fabrication
processes performed in separate chambers within the lab and on separate instruments and/or bench
environments. The Equipment Usage Fee is an hourly charge related to the higher associated costs of
running process equipment which is available but may not be needed by all users. These costs are
incurred at the option of the user. There are currently six billable processes within the lab: reactive ion
etching, PECVD thin film growth, metalization (ebeam evaporator, sputtering), electron beam
lithography, and electrolytic plating. The fee for these services averages $30/hr and is currently being
revised to reflect the differing cost of the materials involved in each process. Some equipment is still in
the process of being installed (July 09) and may not yet be available. These fees will be charged process-
by-process to the research group/company based on the lab’s online equipment reservation system as
documentation for actual time on machines. Users will be billed for reserved time unless a cancellation is
made at least one half hour in advance of the reservation time. UV and DUV photolithography exposure
tool usage is included in the monthly user fee, as is metrology tool usage and wet chemistry bench access.
Some of these processes may still require reservations through our web based calendar system to avoid
usage time conflicts.
SPECIAL MATERIALS AND PROCESSES
In addition to the lab’s Equipment Usage Fee, the lab will charge extra for test wafers and for preparing
photolithographic masks. The mask prep charges will vary greatly depending on feature size and cell
density. Precious materials supplied by the CHM may result in a $50 surcharge.
PRECIOUS METAL SURCHARGE
The lab may assess a surcharge for precious metals such as gold that exceed a certain basic allowance for
typical lab work .
TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
The lab will charge $40.00 per hour for technical consultation and/or custom process set-up by the Lab
Manager or other professional lab technicians employed by the Institute. Training on equipment operation
is not charged this fee.