[BNC-all] Mask-Making Services in the BNC

[James Cooper]

To:	All Birck Nanotechnology Center Faculty, Staff, and Students
From:	Jim Cooper, Interim Director

This is to inform you that Jeff Grau resigned his position at Purdue University on Monday of this week to pursue other opportunities.  As most of you know, Jeff had served as our photomask and photolithography engineer for more than five years.  We thank him for his past contributions and wish him well in his new endeavors.

The Birck leadership is aggressively pursuing a replacement for this position.  In the meantime, John Coy has agreed to provide mask and lithography services for Birck users on an interim basis.  John has worked with these tools in the past, and is quickly re-learning the operation of the Electromask systems and the optical lithography tools.

Mask orders should continue to be placed as normal.  A decision will be made for each order whether to process the mask in-house or to send it for processing at an outside mask shop.  We are working with a variety of mask shops to set up ordering and quick-turn processing.  Regardless of who processes the mask, Purdue or an outside shop, the goal is to make the mask creation/procurement process transparent to Birck users.  Please note the turn-around time during this period may not be as short as users have experienced in the past.

We ask for your patience as we work through this organizational issue.  Of course, you may contract directly with an outside mask shop if you choose.  If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to communicate with Ron Reger, John Weaver, or myself.

Thanks for your understanding and patience.

	--Jim