A Cleanroom in a Glovebox
Abstract
The exploration of new materials, novel quantum phases, and devices requires ways to prepare cleaner samples with smaller feature sizes. Initially, this meant the use of a cleanroom that limits the amount and size of dust particles. However, many materials are highly sensitive to oxygen and water in the air. Furthermore, the ever-increasing demand for a quantum workforce, trained and able to use the equipment for creating and characterizing materials, calls for a dramatic reduction in the cost to create and operate such facilities. To this end, we present our cleanroom-in-a-glovebox, a system which allows for the fabrication and characterization of devices in an inert argon atmosphere. We demonstrate the ability to perform a wide range of characterization as well as fabrication steps, without the need for a dedicated room, all in an argon environment. Connection to a vacuum suitcase is also demonstrated to enable receiving from and transfer to various ultra-high vacuum (UHV) equipment including molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM).
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2007.13784,
title = {A Cleanroom in a Glovebox},
author = {Mason J. Gray and Narendra Kumar and Ryan O'Connor and Marcel Hoek and Erin Sheridan and Meaghan C. Doyle and Marisa L. Romanelli and Gavin B. Osterhoudt and Yiping Wang and Vincent Plisson and Shiming Lei and Ruidan Zhong and Bryan Rachmilowitz and He Zhao and Hikari Kitadai and Steven Shepard and Leslie M. Schoop and G. D. Gu and Ilija Zeljkovic and Xi Ling and K. S. Burch},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.13784},
year = {2020}
}