As part of the Shared Equipment Authority (SEA), Rice’s core lab facilities management organization, the SEA Nanofabrication Cleanroom and its staff constitutes a critical element of the university’s research infrastructure. The new cleanroom reopened in January 2019 in the basement of the Space Science and Technology building and consists of more than 2800 sq ft of Class 100 (ISO 5) process bays, with more than 3000 sq ft of back end work space and service chases. Additionally, auxiliary support spaces house dedicated facilities supplying HVAC, ultra high purity compressed gases, and electronic grade ultrapure water. This essential core facility leverages a suite of research-scale semiconductor industry tools to enable device fabrication for such diverse applications as materials science, microelectronics, microfluidics, nanotechnology, neuroengineering, and photonics. It supports over 120 unique users per calendar year from 10 departments across the schools of engineering and science, representing over two dozen faculty stakeholders from Rice alone, plus more from other institutions of the Texas Medical Center, the University of Houston, and the commercial sector.

*All internal users (including from GCC institutions) are billed normal use (but not training or precious metal consumables) at the full rate until they reach $2500 in one month, After that limit is reached in a single month, normal use is billed at 50% the standard rate.

Note: This maximum excludes charges for precious metals, training, and daily access fee.

SEA is adopting this new fee structure to encourage widespread use of its state-of-the-art Cleanroom facility, to allow for better budgeting of sponsored research costs, and to match our peer institution pricing models. As with all of our fees, we will continue to monitor and reevaluate this policy on a regular basis.

SEA has created this policy with the expectation that existing research groups will continue to have multiple group members accessing the Cleanroom. If this expectation is not met, SEA may not be able to support this new structure. Please plan your research behavior accordingly.

More information about the Cleanroom can be found here.