Research aimed at developing the next generation of computer technology will be the focus of a new center to be built at Purdue University with a $30 million gift from a Chicago business leader.
The Birck Nanotechnology Center on the West Lafayette, Ind., campus will anchor a research complex at the university that will begin construction next summer. The $30 million gift from Michael Birck, chairman and co-founder of Tellabs Inc. of Lisle, and his wife, Katherine, will enable Purdue researchers to move in a new direction.
“Electrical engineers who have spent their careers working on microelectronics are shifting their focus to nanotechnology,” said Kent Fuchs, head of electrical engineering at Purdue.
A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, about as big as 10 atoms. Researchers working in this realm are trying to build devices the size of several atoms. Northwestern University in Evanston and Argonne National Laboratory in DuPage County are building nanotech centers as are many others across the country.
If nanotech, which is the ability to make materials using small clumps of molecules as building blocks, leads to new avenues of computing as many researchers hope, a new industry will follow.
Martin Jischke, Purdue’s president, echoed the views of many who are building nanocenters. “This new nanotechnology facility will position Indiana to become a player in the `Silicon Valley’ of the future,” he said.
A major feature of the Birck nanotech center, which was announced Friday, will be about 14,000 square feet of clean rooms, said George Adams, a Purdue electrical engineering faculty member who headed the planning committee. Working in a dust-free environment is essential for nanotech research.
“If you are trying to make something that is 20 nanometers wide and a 300-nanometer piece of dust falls on it, that’s like having a big rock fall on your experiment,” Adams said. “In these clean rooms the ceiling is one giant filter.”
The new facility will also be controlled for temperature and vibration fluctuations that can hamper work.
Birck, a Purdue alumnus who serves on the university’s board of trustees, said he made the gift to keep Purdue in the research forefront. “Virtually all universities with an engineering focus consider nanotechnology to be an essential technology.”
