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We're Building a Nano — What?
By: John Heidbreder

McCarthy is building the new Cornell Nanofabrica-tion Facility (CNF) at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.

In February of this year, President Bush submitted a $2.13 trillion budget to Congress that proposed a 17 percent boost in nanotechnology research, jumping funding to $679 million.

McCarthy is working to get our share (lots of nano shares?) of this work, so maybe terms like Carbon nanotube, Gray goo, Nano-bot, Nanometer, Nanotechnology, Quantum computing and Scanning probe microscopes will be common in the next version of Prolog.

Nanotechnology is the manipulation of single atoms and molecules to create objects that can be smaller than 100 nanometers. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, which is about a hundred-thousandth of the diameter of a human hair, or 10 times the diameter of a hydrogen atom.

But even as nanotechnology is much more complex than just stacking carbon atoms into diamonds, building Duffield Hall is much more complex than just digging a hole and pouring concrete.

McCarthy/Welliver McGuire broke ground last summer on Duffield Hall. Several unique construction challenges relating to building a research facility adjacent to existing structures have been identified and addressed.

Building around (and under) existing facilities: The construction of the new facility required the installation of piles approximately five feet from existing foundations, and the new facility will ultimately sit on top of the existing Knight Laboratory (home of the existing CNF). Maintaining CNF's ability to perform research on nanometer-scale structures in the existing Knight Lab's during construction has been a challenge. Rock blasting had to be performed during the excavation for Duffield's foundation while research was performed in the adjacent Knight Lab. Research and construction were coordinated so that both could occur as scheduled.

Vibration monitoring was performed to provide indication of acceptable levels of vibration during routine construction activities. The monitoring device was so sensitive that it could detect when doors were shut inside the laboratory.

No interruption of research activities: The construction team was given the mandate that there could be no interruption of the research being performed. We were also required to maintain both facilities for three months once the new structure was available. The fact that the existing building was inside the footprint of the new structure only made this requirement more challenging. The new clean room for CNF will be built, a “clean” connecting link between the new on old clean room will then be built and maintained for 3-4 months, and then the old facility will be torn down and the new Duffield Hall will be finished.

Research vs. Production: In a manufacturing facility, a consistent high quality and high rate of production is desired. Because this is a research facility, high production rates are not a factor. Instead, the availability of tools to support the research effort is important, along with a structure that incorporates all of the known factors affecting Nanofabrication re-search. This included having researchers testing building materials for potential electromagnetic interference prior to pouring concrete for the structure.

Clean Room Construc-tion and Building Code Requirements: As with any building on the Cornell campus, great lengths are taken to insure that new structures reflect the character of the University and in this case, the Engineering Quadrangle. The project architects, Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, had to insure that the research in Duffield Hall would not pose a health hazard to other labs and classrooms throughout the complex — while maintaining the desired architectural effect. It wasn't until the International Building Code was developed that specific codes existed for clean room construction. Cornell and the design team had the foresight to modify the design of the building to meet the new codes. This “upgrade” was required to accommodate the new Nanofabrication tools and processes that have been developed since the project was originally designed.

The intimate knowledge of Cornell's expectations by our joint venture partners (Welliver McGuire) has been invaluable to the successful first half of the project. The blend of experiences of our project staffs has allowed us to maintain a complicated schedule and provide a high quality product.

The effort put forth by the project team is definitely not on a nano-scale.