Business Gateway

How businesses can interact with the staff, resources and facilities of the Utah Nanofab, including the cleanroom “machine shop of the future,” and the analytical and imaging instruments.

What We Provide:

Nano-Scale Imaging and Surface Analysis: imaging and compositional analysis at multiple dimensional scales and in multiple imaging modes, including optical, x-ray, electron and ion.  Our instruments each have acronyms that together look like alphabet soup, so please contact us to discuss the application question you have, and then we will tell you whether our suite of complementary instruments can help you.  Or else we will attempt to refer you to other capabilities that are better suited to your application.

Our Approach:

We DON’T want your IP

We DO want to support your success

Tell us what we need to know to support your development or failure analysis efforts. We are here to help you.

Our Pricing:

A note on tool use pricing: Our purpose is not to compete with companies providing prototyping or analytical services. Among the missions of the facility is a State-chartered role to support Utah and regional companies that need access to complementary tools/instruments and the associated customized infrastructure and support expertise. These are extraordinarily expensive in both up-front capital cost, and also in on-going operations cost. USTAR envisioned this facility to support research in the educational environment, but also intended to give a leg-up to the small Utah companies competing nation- and world-wide. Our rates are comparable to other similar facilities and are heavily subsidized to cover the costs of operation and maintenance.

Who to Contact:

	Brian Baker Staff Process Engineer	1280 MEB (801) 587-1291 bbaker@eng.utah.edu
	Amy Lash Administrative Officer	2515 SMBB (801) 587-0676 amy.vanroosendaal@utah.edu

 How to access our facilities:

1. Easiest and fastest path to Analytical and Imaging instruments: Call us to arrange a discussion of what you are looking for. We reserve the tool.  We get you the information. You pay with a credit card. Tell us enough about your project so that we can help you with accurate image and data interpretation.
2. Longer-term projects such as fabrication or regular imaging jobs options: If you are building something with us, we recommend a process review in which you interact with our staff to determine the best means of accomplishing your goals.
   1. Create an open P.O. or set up a credit card. We do the work as-needed. Give us a call.
   2. Ask us to train your employees. We are a 24/7 facility. Your people reserve and rent tool time through a handheld device, or remotely check for immediate tool availability, and come get the work done.
   3. You hire one of our students. They are on-campus and work 15-20 hrs per week for you, in the cleanroom or on the analytical imaging tools or both. They interface with you as-needed, and otherwise work with our staff to ensure your/their questions are answered how to provide you with the proper devices or data or image information.
3. R&D development projects
   1. For task-driven projects, these are easily managed by you and funded through a “sponsored project”, billed hourly and customized to need. Give us a call.
   2. For milestone- and deliverables-driven projects, we refer you to our sister organization, the Center for Engineering Innovation, which provides direct engineering support and program management, and can create contracts with fixed fee pricing for deliverables. CEI have direct access to all Nanofab tools. CEI are familiar with the techniques and work together with Nanofab staff to constantly keep each other apprised of new approaches. But CEI also have access to other resources off-campus and through connections at Fraunhofer, in order to greatly multiply the number of physical and expert resources brought to bear on a given project.