Space & Astronomy/Space and Astronomy (October 1993).iso/pc/text/jplnews2/1211.pr

Text File | 1993-05-03 | 5KB | 108 lines

PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE [phone]

EDITORS: The dedication is not open to the general public, but
reporters, photographers and camera crews are welcome.
Interviews and a tour of the new facility will be arranged for
interested media personnel.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
        A dedication ceremony for the new three-story
Microdevices Laboratory building at Jet Propulsion Laboratory is
scheduled for 1:30 p.m. October 27, Dr. Lew Allen, JPL director,
announced.
    The new Microdevices Laboratory (MDL) will house the Center
for Space Microelectronics Technology, established in January
1987 by a Memorandum of Understanding between NASA and California
Institute of Technology.
    Invited to attend the dedication were scientists, members
of the California Institute of Technology faculty, state
legislators and city officials from Pasadena and La Canada
Flintridge, and other dignataries.
    The center provides long range research and development in
advanced microelectronics for NASA and Department of Defense
space missions.
    The Microdevices Laboratory is the principal facility of the
center. Using the new 38,000-square-foot, three-story laboratory,
the CSMT will develop and test improved sensors and high-datarate information processing and storage devices.
    "The Microdevices Laboratory is a major milestone in
reaching JPL's goal of building a center of excellence for
research and development of space microelectronics," Dr. Allen
said.
    With laboratories on the ground floor and offices on the
second and third floors, the Microdevices Laboratory offers a
full complement of modern equipment for device fabrication. It
includes clean rooms, diagnostic laboratories, conference rooms
and offices for approximately 50 scientists and engineers. The
clean rooms, which occupy about half of the floor plan, provide
the dust-free environment needed for lithography and
semiconductor device fabrication.
    The CSMT encompasses four major research areas. They are
solid state devices, photonics, custom microcircuits and computer
architecture.
    Research in the MDL is focused on new focal plane detectors
for Earth observation and astronomy, accelerometers and other
sensors for guidance and control, lasers for communication and
active sensing, photovoltaic solar cells for spacecraft power,
high-speed devices for signal and data processing, and novel
approaches to data storage.
    The equipment in the MDL includes an electron beam
lithography instrument that offers unsurpassed resolution in the
fabrication of microdevices. The instrument can form circuit
patterns on semiconductors and superconductors with features
smaller than  7.5 nanometers (one nanometer is one billionth of a

meter).
    This is more than 50 times smaller than the feature size of
the highst density chips currently in production. Any lithography
required during the next several generations of micro-
miniaturization can be carried out using this instrument.
    One of the innovative tools used by the MDL is the scanning-
tunneling microscope. It uses a process called electron
tunneling to look at the surfaces of structures and materials at
the resolution of a single atom. The microscope has been used at
JPL to make images of semiconductors and superconductors needed
in space devices.
    Another focus of the MDL is the electronic implementation of
neural networks that imitate many of the functions of the human
brain. Of particular interest to space applications are fault
tolerant computer memories, ultrafast analog computers for star
tracking and computers capable of learning to be used for
robotics.
    Devices created and developed in the MDL through proof-of-
concept stage will be turned over to private industry for
production. All work at the center is unclassified and research
results will be publicized in the appropriate technical
literature.
    Design and engineering of the MDL were completed in 1986 by
the JPL staff in collaboration with the architecture and
engineering contractor Anderson, DeBartolo, Pan, Inc. of Tucson,
Ariz.
    The CSMT is directed by a board of governors chaired by Dr.Allen. Other members of the board include Dr. Thomas E. Everhart,
president, California Institute of Technology; Dr. Barclay Kamb,
provost, California Institute of Technology; Dr. William
Ballhaus, NASA Associate Administrator, Office of Aeronautics and
Space Technology; Dr. Lennard Fisk, NASA Associate Administrator,
Office of Space Science and Applications; Dr. Raymond Colladay,
director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Dr.
Dwight Duston, Director of the Innovative Science & Technology
Office, Strategic Defense Initiative Organization.
    Dr. Terry Cole, JPL chief technologist, will introduce
speakers and guests at the dedication ceremony. Remarks will be
made by Drs. Allen, Everhart, Fisk, Duston, and Carl Kukkonen,
Director of the Center for Space Microelectronics Technology.
    JPL is a division of Caltech, operated for NASA as NASA's
lead center for planetary and other space science missions.
Caltech faculty collaboration is a principal feature of the CSMT.

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