Photo of VOYAGER user Adrian Iovan

Adrian Iovan

VOYAGER at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Photo of the electron beam lithography system VOYAGER
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Adrian Iovan

VOYAGER at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology

“It is my pleasure to say a few words about the ebeam system which we have in the lab: VOYAGER from Raith. We have had the system in the lab for more then 3 years now and have had the chance to explore it in this period.

The machine offers the lab a big advantage concerning patterning of nanostructures. Although you might think it is just an ebeam machine, this machine can also give high patterning currents. Such currents can be used for making nanoscale or micronic structures into large areas very quickly. Alignment between micronic and nanostructures is not a problem and we achieved very good results here.

We developed a process for 20 nm nanowires which works well and is stable and reproducible even over large areas (cm²). We integrated such structures into a micronic device in the same step of the lithography process. Large area nanoscale structures and good alignment were the key to developing multiplexing devices with 2 single photon detectors based on a superconductor. Overall the resolution, alignment, stitching, and reproducibility of the devices were impressive during this project. A publication on the respective research can be found here: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0019734.

The machine can be used for research but also enables working with wafers and is a very good tool that can be used for industrial applications. Since we work in academia, it is important for us to teach the students well and have the possibility to make our own devices as quickly as possible. We now have a workflow standard that users can follow, and the results are warranted.

The machine works well and has many automatic functions for focusing and alignment, which can be used very easily without too much concern about the human factor. For more experienced users and very advanced research projects, the machine can also be configured manually in almost every aspect, giving the user the possibility to explore the patterning process from many different points of view.
In our view, a very important aspect of the machine functionality is the service contract, where the company provides us a direct line to call. They can remote the machine to check and solve the problems quickly. It is a big advantage that we hardly need someone to take care of the machine, and our problems have always been solved professionally in a short time.

Overall we are very happy with the machine’s readability and performance; it is easy to use and we are really confident that we made a good choice buying this machine. It is heavily used in the lab, produces great results, and increases the value of the lab and university, and we really believe that this enhances the value of the research in general.”