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TECH TRANSFER UPDATE

NASA lab looking for R&D partners

NASA is offering the services of a 24,000-sq-ft R&D fab and cleanroom facility at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center as part of its new campaign to showcase the commercialization capabilities of the national labs. NASA chose to highlight the Goddard facility, called the Detector Development Laboratory (DDL), because the lab's ability to perform highly advanced R&D suits the needs of semiconductor manufacturers and industries with similar technological requirements.

Located at the Goddard site in Greenbelt, MD, the three-story DDL houses a 4400-sq-ft Class 10 cleanroom on a vibration-isolated floor. The cleanroom features eight bays individually dedicated to a specific process function. In addition to an Eaton NV-1002 high-energy ion implanter, the facility's equipment list features tools for optical lithography, wet etching, plasma dry etching, thermal processing, ECR chemical vapor deposition, and material characterization.

NASA has increased its efforts to commercialize the use of its facilities through partnerships with industry, academia, and other government agencies. In the case of Goddard, the agency is looking for commercial partners with projects that do not interfere with the center's primary mission of space exploration.

Daniel Goldin, NASA's administrator, "has been emphasizing commercialization for several years now," says Laura Schoppe, a research engineer for Research Triangle Institute (RTI) and manager of the campaign to bring Goddard's technology transfer potential to the attention of the private sector. RTI's NASA Technology Applications Team, based at RTI headquarters in Research Triangle Park, NC, evaluates and markets technologies developed by the agency.

NASA has spent time assessing the technology transfer capabilities of its field centers, such as Goddard and the Kennedy Space Flight Center in Cape Canaveral. In the past when companies came calling, the agency was not well prepared to pitch its wares. At Goldin's insistence, Schoppe says, "NASA took stock of what it had to offer." The sales effort today includes brochures and a CD-ROM that offers a virtual reality tour of space labs such as the DDL. NASA, adds the research engineer, "is now ready to put its best foot forward."

NASA selected the DDL as the first Goddard lab to receive the star treatment "because it's the most available and the most advanced" such facility, Schoppe points out. She also notes that the lab is underutilized and generally available, although any project "needs to fit in with mission requirements. Goddard consistently has mission-related activity going on. However, when I was there for a few days filming for the CD-ROM, there were only three people working in the lab."

Goddard's ability to work with industry is high, says Schoppe. The DDL has developed a process for manufacturing extremely low-noise junction field effect transistors capable of operating at liquid nitrogen temperatures of 77 K. The Eaton implanter, which has a range of 10 KeV to 3 MeV, provides ion doses between 10¹¹ and 10¹⁶ ions per square centimeter. Built around a linear accelerator, the tool is controlled by 10 computers and uses robotic arms to load up to 25 wafers in a Class 1 environment. The implanter handles wafers measuring up to 200 mm. The lab's sensing system monitors toxic and pyrophoric gases around the clock.

Schoppe says that partnering costs are determined on "a case-by-case basis" and depend on the amount of equipment and number of government personnel required. Goddard offers companies a variety of partnering arrangements. Firms may buy technology developed by NASA for integration into a product line. Alternatively, they may develop the technology further to suit new product requirements. Partnerships can take many forms, from a memorandum of agreement to a patent license.

The agency's commercialization program can be particularly helpful to small firms, according to the president of one such company that has been involved in an ongoing project with Goddard's DDL since May 1995. Perry Skeath of Spray Chip Systems in Lanham, MD, praises the lab for "allowing us to use their standard processes such as micromachining and also giving us the space to do some custom process development, both of which are essential."

Spray Chip Systems manufactures fluid microsystems for use as automobile fuel injectors and medical nebulizers. The vendor has used DDL's mask aligners, cleaning apparatus, oxidation furnaces, diffusion tools, and implanter.

Skeath declines to reveal the cost of the partnership. He notes that as a small company with its corporate headquarters in Maryland, Spray Chip "is lucky in many ways, and probably has a leg up in terms of a working relationship" with the lab. "But I think the attitude there at Goddard is very open to working with business, so I don't think we got that much of an advantage over anyone else.

Skeath says that Spray Chip is based in Lanham mainly because the site is near Goddard. He adds: "It's not just technology transfer that's going on in these labs. It's more like technology partnership."

Skeath acknowledges that larger companies may not need the R&D boost that a DDL can provide. However, he emphasizes, "if any company wants to separate its production and R&D, this is a nice way to do it. An R&D facility costs a lot of money. For a small company like us this makes good sense."

(Interested parties may contact Glenn Unger, 301/286-5979; E-mail, glenn.l.unger.1@gsfc.nasa.gov. Goddard's WWW address is http://www.afc.gsfc.nasa.gov/ocp)

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