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Michael Padilla, 277-1816
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February 18, 2002
Quirk part of UNM team scheduled for NASA flight at Johnson
Space Center
Las
Cruces native Thomas Quirk is among a team of students from the University of
New Mexico Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering that will fly an experiment
on board the microgravity KC-135 airplane at Johnson Space Center on March 7.
The project is part of the NASA Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities
Program.
This is the second year in a row the department has won this national competition
allowing the students to investigate the effect of weightlessness on spin-coating
of computer wafers. The members of UNM, “S.P.I.N. Doctors” (Study
of Photoresist in New Mexico) team, will fly on two consecutive days, two members
each day for two hours.
“The most exciting ascpet of the project is knowing that we will be conducting
practical research that may be applied in the technologies of tomorrow,”
said Quirk.
Spin-coating a photoresist polymer over a silicon substrate is traditionally
one of the first steps in the manufacture of microprocessors in the semiconductor
industry. This process is also widely employed in a number of other applications,
including flat-screen display coatings, compact disks and television tube phosphor
coatings. El-Genk said spin-coating is a fairly simple procedure involving minimal
equipment and time.
The overall objectives of the experiment are to determine what role gravity
plays in the spin-coating process and to ascertain whether or not spin-coating
represents a viable method to coat a substrate with a thin, uniform film of
material in a zero-gravity environment.
El-Genk said the procedure on board of the KC-135 airplane represents a fascinating,
though somewhat complicated, fluid dynamics problem.
“Through the proposed experimentation, we hope to quantify the role gravity
plays in the process, as well as determine if spin-coating may someday be feasible
in a space environment,” El-Genk said.
The experiment will be carried out similarly to last year’s experiment.
A modified spin-coater will be adapted for operation aboard the plane. The experiment
will require two operators: one to store prepared wafers and place a clean wafer
into the instrument, the other to change the parameters on the instrument control
panel. Upon return to the lab, the photoresist films of each wafers prepared
aboard the KC-135 will be profiled. This will help determine the overall thickness
of the photoresist film, as well as the characteristics of the film at the edge
of the wafer.
The specific objectives of the experiments are to collect a large enough database
on spin-coating in microgravity and examine the effects of different operation
parameters such the spin speed, the dispense rate of the photoresist polymer,
and to obtain high-quality video footage of the spin-coating process in microgravity.
In addition, the objective is to compare the characteristics of the photoresist
film developed in microgravity, and examine the reproducibility of the results
by performing repetitive experiments at the same condition in microgravity.
El-Genk said the team hopes to conduct several outreach activities to increase
awareness regarding the experiment. Presentations will be conducted at Eldorado
and Sandia High Schools as well as at other public schools. A video will also
be created to highlight the experiment.
Tom Gamble, is the student team leader, and El-Genk, faculty advisor. The faculty co-advisor is Robert Busch, chemical and nuclear engineering professor. The external technical advisor is Dr. Steve Thornberg from Sandia National Laboratories.
Thornberg collaborated with UNM last year and provided all the hardware used
in the experiment. The UNM team consists of chemical and nuclear engineering
undergraduate students, Jason Brown, Tiffany Schofield, Brett Andrzejewski,
Julie Nguyen, Daniel Torres and Quirk. High school students include Chris Cutler,
Eldorado High School, and Corey Flack, Sandia High School.
His parents are Thomas and Elizabeth Quirk.
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