[BNC-all] BNC E-news for the week of 6.16.14

[Anthrop, Heather L]

NSAC Coffee Hour
Office Notes
Survey Feedback
Travel

NSAC Coffee Hour

Friday, June 20th at 3:30 pm in the Birck atrium

Presenter: Fei Ding

Unidirectional Surface Plasmon Polariton Coupler in the Visible Using Metasurfaces

Office Notes

Respect for other people's work areas -
We are in the process of placing 4 computers on the study desks in the back of the Atrium.  These are for student use.  Please remember that the desks that are located at the front desk and 2nd floor are work spaces for our full time employees and are not open desk spaces.  Please do not use the secretarial desks.  We should respect their work space.

Lock your offices!  Please make sure you lock your office before leaving.  We want to make sure that all your personal items are safe.

Re-cycling: If you have empty boxes that need re-cycling, please place them outside your office door in the hallway and mark trash.  We are not allowed to remove them if they are still in the office.

Thank you,
Mary Jo Totten

Survey Feedback

Equipment Downtime

Recent comments on the surveys have expressed obvious frustration by our user community that broken/down equipment is not being addressed in a timely manner.  Please know that the staff does everything possible to diagnose problems and provide corrective actions in a timely manner.  Specific mention was made of the extended downtime of the Lesker e-beam evaporator.  It turns out that the high voltage power supply failed.  The supply was shipped back to the factory for repair and we have now received the repaired unit back at Birck.  Dave is installing it and the Lesker should be back online for research on Friday.

Sometimes users ask when the down systems will be back online, and many times we don't exactly know because the root cause of the problem has not yet been determined.  In the case of the Lesker we did extensive trouble-shooting of several components before we determined the HV power supply was the issue.  Then the time to ship the unit to the factory, and the factory repair time, adds to the delay in getting the system back online.  We thank you for your patience, and in the case of the Lesker we tried to provide alternatives for thin film deposition.

The Panasonic etcher is another case in point.  Geoff has spent a considerable number of hours diagnosing the issue, and now a new vacuum pump and valves are being ordered.  In the meantime we are offering a manual intervention to run critically needed processes on the Panasonic.  Please see Geoff for your process needs.

We certainly understand the frustration many researchers have of not knowing when a broken research tool will be fixed.  In the future we will attempt to provide a bracketed timeline on when equipment might be repaired and returned to service.  This may not always be possible due to uncertainties in the troubleshooting, but we will attempt to provide a time window based on possible solutions being pursued.  We hope this will help drive decisions on alternative process options that could be considered by the users.

Cleanliness & Budget

A researcher commented this week that all users of the facility should adopt a campaign to clean work areas after use.  Also, it was suggested to leave equipment in a state that will enable ease of use for the next person, and that will promote long-term uptime (like turning off microscope lamps to extend their useful life).    In addition the user noted that cleanroom wipes are wasted because many times more wipes are used than are required.  So please be thrifty in your use if cleanroom supplies.

Solvent Labels

An input was received that the solvent list need to be updated with our current chemicals.  We will take the action item to update the solvent lists.

Thanks again for your constructive suggestions.

Ron

Travel
Please remember to enter all trips into Concur before the trip occurs. Risk Management must track all international travelers and maintain a database of where people are and when they are there in case there is a need to evacuate. If you have any questions or concerns please contact Lois High in Risk Management.
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