{"id":6821,"date":"2020-03-31T15:55:05","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T13:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.go-fair.org\/?page_id=6821"},"modified":"2020-04-17T14:27:54","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T12:27:54","slug":"go-nanofab","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.go-fair.org\/implementation-networks\/overview\/go-nanofab\/","title":{"rendered":"Nano-Fabrication (GO NANOFAB)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Active GO FAIR Implementation Network<\/strong>
\nIn the field of cleanroom nanofabrication (NF), the know-how is in constant evolution under the demand of the user community that is constantly requesting fabrication of new nanodevices to address new research goals. Therefore, NF cleanrooms are constantly developing new NF processes to fulfil the requirements of their users.<\/p>\n

However, many cleanrooms are reinventing the wheel everyday by developing new NF processes that have already been developed in other cleanrooms. This considerable waste of resources can be avoided by providing access to NF processes that have already been developed by other cleanrooms.<\/p>\n

For this reason, the first difficulty obviously consists in convincing cleanrooms to give access to their know- how, but beyond this difficulty, they face a real technical problem: NF processes are notoriously difficult to export and workflows developed in one cleanroom require new development and significant lead time before they can be deployed and integrated at other sites.<\/p>\n

Basically, NF processes consist of: (i) a workflow, (ii) a series of process steps<\/strong> described by process parameters, reagents and variables (recipe), (iii) a set of process rules<\/strong>. Process parameters are often validated only for a given machine, and will vary according to the model, the history of the machine as well as a variety of uncontrolled parameters such as machine contamination, sample cleaning etc.<\/p>\n

Documentation is often based on personal or laboratory notebooks, and operator manipulation can have a significant impact on processes. Currently, there is little standardisation across the NF community, and incomplete data make the exchange and scaling of process flows between sites inefficient and at times impossible.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the NF process data management is different in different cleanrooms. Some of them have in house built systems, some of them share licensed access to servers, some still work on offline tools.<\/p>\n

In the perspective of building a distributed cleanroom infrastructure potentially capable to exchange process building blocks, it is necessary to set up a unified framework for NF process description, storage and accessibility that enables interoperability of these process building blocks and their reusability in other process workflows. This framework can be built in a sustainable manner by using the FAIR data management and stewardship approach.<\/p>\n

A major goal of the EuroNanoLab (http:\/\/euronanolab.eu\/) consortium consists in developing process descriptions that are precise enough to be reused by other facilities with minimal development. This is why EuroNanoLab is at the origin of the creation of the GO NANOFAB Implementation Network (IN), which aims to achieve this objective by developing the most accurate description of NF processes, standardised data exchange formats and data management methods using the FAIR approach. The methods used are obviously intended to be extended to all actors of nanofabrication at the international level, which will enable exchanging know-how in the most effective way during any cooperation between these actors.<\/p>\n

Besides the possibility to reuse the technology in different cleanrooms, setting a FAIR oriented standard to represent NF steps and workflows generates many other positive \u00ab side effects \u00bb. By building appropriate interfaces to the ENL e-infrastructure (i) external users will be given the possibility to access process data to feed simulators (ii) it will be easier and faster to find where to obtain a desired process (iii) resource optimisation will be possible, since having the possibility to transfer processes from one cleanroom to others will reduce the impact of equipment downtime.<\/p>\n

In 2019, the GO NANOFAB consortium included 44 clean rooms at leading Universities and Research Institutes in 14 European countries (EuroNanoLab: NO, SE, FI, ES, LV, LT, NL, FR, DE, CZ, RO, IT, ES, PT). GO NANOFAB is open to all NF centers worldwide and is actively seeking to engage potential international partners with networks of cleanrooms in the USA (NNCI network), JAPAN (Nanotech Platform), and AUSTRALIA.<\/p>\n

At the international level, the participation of several cleanroom networks will be sought:<\/p>\n