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Hundreds of students and researchers, as well as peer institutions, national labs
and industry use the University of Michigan's Robert H. Lurie Nanofabrication Facility.
It is considered one of the best facilities of its kind in the world.
Within LNF laboratories, a diverse
community of collaborative users is developing breakthrough solutions to the
most challenging global issues.
>>Putting all these different researchers and that
whole community in the same location has really enabled collaborations and
cross-pollinization of ideas.
LNF is now in a position where we feel that we are ready
to support whatever is the next generation of research.
Inside the cleanrooms, researchers build materials by the nano layer,
design semiconductor devices,
pattern and etch, bond and anneal
and measure results at the atomic level.
These capabilities facilitate research in nearly every department at Michigan Engineering.
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The Lurie Nanofabrication Facility has been awesome
for making our carbon fiber electrodes. We're basically making little mini
circuit boards to stick into the brain.
Much of Biomedical Engineering Professor Cindy Chestek's
work focuses on restoring natural movement to individuals
who have lost the use of their hands whether due to amputation,
spinal cord injury or other causes of paralysis.
This work includes improving neural signal control of prosthetics and natural limbs
through novel and improved brain machine interfaces,
functional electrical stimulation and assistive exoskeletons
and it all begins with solving the age-old puzzle of what
neurons in the brain actually do.
The University of Michigan is one of the only places
where we have truly state-of-the-art micro fabrication
and top 10 medical school so this is the natural place for something to go all
the way from a student project to animal testing and eventually into human studies.
Department Chair Jerry Lynch is working on another innovative project
involving prosthetics.
His research focuses on using implantable sensors to
improve the safety, integrity and comfort of a new generation of prosthetic limbs.
>>So we are using the Lurie Nanofabrication Facility to develop these
thin-film sensing technologies that essentially allow us to monitor things
such as strain in the bone, the weakening of the bone prosthetic interface and the
pH of the surrounding tissue as a means of indirectly monitoring when the tissue
sees changes in pH that are associated with infections.
One of the major advantages of this facility is how easy it is to gain
access to it and how supportive the staff is in training students and
postdocs that might not have previous experience working in clean room facilities.
Familiarity with clean rooms gives Michigan graduates an advantage
when competing for top positions at national labs and tech companies.
I chose Michigan in part because of the fantastic fabrication facilities.
They are constantly updating their machinery by what people need to do:
cutting-edge research.
I think that our lab has an exceptional community, people here are
very kind and I don't know if you can find that kind of almost family-like sense everywhere.
The LNF doesn't benefit U of M alone, it is a resource for
the entire state; attracting research and development talent from industry,
government agencies and other universities.
The fact that LNF was very close
was a driving impetus for us actually starting the company.
The staff were extremely willing to work heavily with outside companies in developing a
potential process to allow us to form a good business plan and that
collaboration has helped us move our devices from being adequate to being
exceptional and that's been excellent.
The LNF allows our students and faculty
to bring daring ideas in micro and nano technology to life.
Regardless of the technologies being used or the materials being used,
the LNF is ready for the next research projects.
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