Interview with Sam Nicaise

Featured Engineer

Sam Nicaise

Sam Nicaise - Graduate Research Assistant at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

How did you get into electronics/ engineering and when did you start?

Prior to my undergrad, two parts of my life led me toward a head-on collision with engineering. I was a very hands-on person. Activities like Boy Scouts and Odyssey of the Mind threw me into situations in which one must creatively concoct real-life solutions on the spot. I enjoyed these opportunities to be quick on my feet and realize the success and failures of my decisions. Furthermore, I loved mathematics, and was lucky to be guided by some amazing teachers along the way. When it came time for me to decide a college major, a key criterion was “a lot of math.” I remember a few people telling me that electrical engineering was the best because it had the most math, and thus was the most logical choice.

How do you like going to school at MIT?

It has been great so far. I have been here for almost a year now, so it has been an experience of growing, figuring things out, meeting new people, and experiencing new things.

Do you want to go in to academia or work out in industry?

Honestly, I am not positive. I am leaning toward more of the industry or government research side of things. Eventually I need to figure that out. Right now I am realizing I have a few options; I’m just going to see where it takes me.

What are your favorite hardware tools that you use?

Now that I have gotten into my graduate research, my favorite hardware tool is a Scanning Electron Beam Lithography system. My research direction has required me to gain an in-depth understanding of how the system operates, and I am forced to push it to its benchmarks. I am always fascinated with the thought of single electrons being accelerated to phenomenal speeds in order to facilitate the fabrication of nanometer-sized features.

What are your favorite software tools that you use?

I think that Matlab has been my favorite software tool for a number of years, and continues to be. I am not a programmer, but I do enjoy programming, and therefore am able to use a number of the wonderful tools within Matlab to progress my research. Recently, I have been using it to develop simulations for self-assembly energy-minimization parameters, as well as extracting metrics from large banks of scanning-electron-micrographs.

What is the hardest/trickiest bug you have ever fixed?

A recent challenge in my research project was attempting to align the writing of two separate patterns with the scanning electron beam lithography system. After writing the first pattern, it is difficult to align a second pattern because of many imperfections in the system. After many months of trying different processes, tweaking steps along the way, and discussing the challenges with others, I was able to get “good” alignment. Though the final process takes over an hour of manual iteration, I was able to produce alignment of the second pattern to the first pattern down to 10 nm. Now, I get to see what I can do with my new skill.

What is on your bookshelf?

My recent top reads have been: Tri Power (as I have picked up triathlon training outside of school). “The Amateurs” by David Halberstam. This story of a select group of dedicated rowers striving to make it to the American Olympic Rowing team in 1984 is enough inspiration to keep me going for years. “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Though I have stepped out of many of my undergraduate leadership roles, the insights and examples of Lincoln ring true in so many parts of life.

What has been your favorite project?

I have been involved in the designing, building, and racing of solar-electric cars for many years now, both in undergrad and now in grad school. These are exciting projects that bring together students of all different engineering and scientific disciplines to produce a very cutting edge vehicle. Students are required to push the cusp with their designs, integrate systems together, solve problems on the fly, and work as a team. All of this work culminates with endurance races in the US and Australia against other cars from university students around the world.

Do you have any note-worthy engineering experiences?

I had a close call with lab safety while working as an undergraduate. One day, I accidently dropped a drop of 70% nitric acid on my shoe. Luckily, I was following procedure and was wearing closed-toed shoes. Though I was safe, the acid left a large, black mark on my leather boots where it had started to eat through the top. To this day, the black mark is my daily reminder that safety is paramount.

What are you currently working on?

My current project involves developing templates for the directed assembly of block co-polymers. These polymers are two chemically different polymers covalently-bonded such that they phase separately at the nanoscale. This separation can have similar length scales to some of the smallest nanofeatures under current investigation. Furthermore, by developing templates, the assembly of these polymers can be directed to form desirable patterns. My specific project involves the development of hybrid physical and chemical templates on the surface of substrates.

What is your specific area of research?

My specific area of research is in the nanofabrication of templates for block copolymer self assembly. You can think of nanofabrication as building a sculpture out of clay or a granite slab. You have top-down, where you have the material there and use a mechanism to define what you want. Or you can do the bottom-up method where things are disordered and you shape them how you want. Bottom-up is what we do with the polymers. Originally, two different chemically dissimilar polymers are bonded to each other and self assemble chaotically. If you give them enough energy, they will rearrange themselves in separated patterns, usually between the 50 and 10 nanometer range. There you have the length scale you are looking for in nanofabrication, but it is sort of chaotic. The way I describe it is like a finger print pattern, somewhat organized, but not completely. By providing top-down templates, polymers can better organize, and you can actually direct their organization to be is less chaotic, more uniform, and more organized.

What is a template exactly?

It starts with what is done for computer chips, called lithography, though we use electron beam lithography, instead of photolithogrphy. We use a single focused beam of electrons to expose hydrogen silsequioxane, HSQ, resist. This negative resist, when exposed to the electrons creates, the template features. Post, line, or area features can be defined arbitrarily in a CAD system. Some people have made trenches, long lines of HSQ, and in between byhe polymers organize as defined by the walls of the trench. Some recent template work by my group by making arrays of posts. The spacing in between the posts defines which way the polymer organizes, depending on if it was parallel, perpendicular, or at an angle from the post. My work is similar in that it uses electron beams to define templates. I am using HSQ resist, as well as self assembled monolayers, which, with electron beam lithography, can be chemically changed in designated areas. The posts’ extra surface area and the self assembled monolayers different surface energy direct block copolymer self assembly.

Where do you manufacture your co-polymers?

Currently we have been purchasing them through a manufacturer; I personally am on the project working with DuPont, whose group has an interest in getting into the copolymer area. This is a work in process. A large amount of interest in this area is from the semiconductor manufacturing side of things. My project is interested in having a product that, down the line, can be incorporated in the manufacturing line. It is exciting to see the commercial side of things.

What do you see as some of the first type or products of this co-polymer and nanotechnology?

Soon, templated self assembly of block copolymers is going to be used for hard disk memory. Hard disk memory has been a technology of focus since the beginning and is finally coming into fruition. From there, it is a matter of how people can find a new use for these processes.

What challenges do you foresee in our industry?

My research project is of high interest to the semiconductor fabrication industry. Many people are familiar with the difficulties in keeping up with Moore’s Law. This is a difficult challenge that will take many innovative solutions, one of which may come from my research project’s area. Fortunately, there are many talented and motivated scientists also working on this challenge, and I believe the industry will continue to “keep up.”

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