Instruments

We build the instruments our experiments require. For students and postdocs, instrument building is not a supporting activity or an opportunity to observe specialists at work. They are expected to take ownership of designing, fabricating, integrating, commissioning, and operating the systems on which their measurements depend.

This ownership is essential to experimental success. An instrument determines which signals can be observed, which backgrounds can be rejected, and which questions can be asked at all. Analyzing data well is indispensable, but building an instrument that acquires data unavailable anywhere else creates the possibility of discovery in the first place. Our group thrives on that process, and members are expected to enjoy building as much as measuring and analyzing.

Own the full experimental chain

We nurture well-rounded experimentalists who can move between physics, engineering, fabrication, computation, and data analysis. Depending on the project, students and postdocs may:

• Design CMOS and semiconductor chips for commercial foundry fabrication, then package, test, and characterize them in house.
• Fabricate or modify specialized semiconductor devices using in-house processes.
• Build complex electronics and computing systems for detector control, data acquisition, real-time processing, and analysis.
• Construct and operate atomic layer deposition systems for growing and studying novel materials.
• Build laser and optical systems for material characterization, microscopy, imaging, manipulation, and precision measurement.
• Assemble vacuum, cryogenic, and high-purity gas or liquid systems for radiation detection.

The objective is not for every person to master every technique at once. It is for each researcher to understand and own enough of the complete measurement chain to make sound design decisions, diagnose failures, and push beyond the limitations of existing equipment.

Build or buy?

Turnkey commercial instruments are excellent when their performance and interfaces match the experiment. We use them when they solve the problem well. However, a commercial system is designed for a broad market, not for the particular material, geometry, noise floor, environmental condition, or operating sequence that may determine the success of our measurement.

In those cases, even a system that already exists in principle may need to be rebuilt or substantially modified. An atomic layer deposition tool, optical microscope, cryogenic apparatus, or data-acquisition system may be commercially available while still preventing access to the parameters we need to change. Closed software, inaccessible hardware, fixed process flows, unsuitable materials, or undocumented control behavior can become experimental limitations.

We therefore dig into the underlying physics and engineering and construct from raw components when control of the implementation matters. We do not build equipment merely to prove that we can, nor do we reject commercial tools by default. We buy what is genuinely standard and build what defines the measurement. Doing so gives us direct knowledge of the instrument, the freedom to modify it, and the ability to obtain results that a general-purpose system cannot provide.

Existing instruments

• Full-chain CMOS design and test facility
• Atomic layer deposition (ALD) system
• DLP-based maskless lithography
• Gaseous and cryogenic liquid noble-gas time projection chambers
• Confocal microscopy for NV-center quantum manipulation