DSU Awarded $215,000 DoD Instrumentation Grant
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded Delaware State University a $215,000 research instrumentation grant that will enable the purchase of a Photomask Aligner (PMA).
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This is a wafer substrate that has had an electronic circuit design imprinted on it through a Photomask Aligner (PMA)The PMA – a tool used to impose electronic designs on a base where electronic circuits are built – will be used in connection with ongoing and future research projects in the Optical Science Center for Applied Research on campus.
“Photomask aligner is technology that transfers electronic circuit design to the base (called a substrate) through an opto-chemical process to fabricate electronic chips,” said Dr. Mukti Rana, chair of the DSU Department of Physics and the principal investigator of the successful grant.
Most immediately, according to Dr. Rana, the PMA will be used for the design and fabrication of nano-machined pyroelectric detectors with ultra-low conductance, a DSU research project that is being funded by a grant from the Office of Naval Research. He said the PMA will also be used in another NASA-related project, which involves the fabrication of uncooled infrared detectors with nanometer-sized studs.
Dr. Rana’s proposal was one of 176 to receive instrumentation funding from the DoD. Those meritorious proposals were selected from among 622 that were submitted for consideration.