The Marvell Nanofabrication Laboratory at UC Berkeley recently received a donation of a multichamber semiconductor etching system from Lam Research.

The etching system will be able to serve not only campus researchers, but also researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UCSF, Stanford University, the rest of the UC system and some private industries, according to Michael Helmbrecht, the executive director of the Marvell Nanofabrication Laboratory.

“Lam’s latest donation gives our researchers and students access to wafer-processing capabilities rarely accessible outside of the most sophisticated semiconductor manufacturing facilities. I look forward to seeing Lam’s advanced etching system enable new atomic-scale process innovations for next-generation chips in the years ahead,” Tsu-Jae King Liu, dean of UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering said in a release from UC Berkeley Engineering.

The etching system can be used to make a broad range of sensors, actuators, lab-on-a-chip systems, electronic circuits in phones and computers and other electronics used in artificial intelligence research according to Helmbrecht.

Electronic circuits can be made using the semiconductor layer etching tool that was donated by Lam Research, and are built similar to “layer cakes,” Helmbrecht said. As layers are added, other layers are etched out, constantly building on top of each other.

The etching tool donated by Lam Research is significant because it allows the researchers to etch out one atomic layer at a time.

Using the new multichamber semiconductor etching system, researchers will be able to design for the “next generation” of electronics, especially for computer hardware that powers artificial intelligence, according to Helmbrecht.

The etching tool will allow researchers and graduate students to physically build things in the lab, not just theorize about their work, Helmbrecht said.

“We believe that academia-industry collaboration is crucial to driving the nanofabrication advancements needed for new generations of Specialty Technologies,” said Vahid Vahedi, chief technology and sustainability officer at Lam Research in a press release. “Lam’s donation will give UC Berkeley’s NanoLab researchers the ability to work directly with an industry-proven semiconductor manufacturing system in their efforts to accelerate innovation and develop new, novel processes.”

Lam Research has a long history of collaboration with campus, helping fund research and making donations, according to the press release from Lam Research. Helmbrecht estimated that campus’s relationship with Lam Research goes back at least 20 years. Campus participated and co-sponsored the Lam Research Technical Symposium in 2022.

The Marvell Nanofabrication Lab expects the etching tool to be delivered in May and will be ready to use by July, Helmbrecht said.

“They’ve been wonderful…they’ve given us a capability that we would not have been able to do ourselves… (and) supported us in getting those tools running and keeping them running,” Helmbrecht said. “This is really a cutting edge capability that I don’t think you’ll find in any other university lab in the world…We are very excited about this.”