This is a publicity photo taken of our MBE system in the new cleanroom expansion. (The photographer demanded that we take off the silly caps we normally have to wear in this room). The expanded cleanroom, now totaling ~ 3500 sq.ft., provided space for my equipment and the MEMS fabrication equipment of Prof. Michael Reed. In the original lab space, colleagues grow and process ultrahigh speed (4THz!) detectors used in a variety of satellite and astronomy applications. A few years ago, the first satellite to map the "hole in the ozone layer" did so using UVA detectors. Similarly, the millimeter wave radio astronomy satellite launched by NASA last December also sees though UVA "eyes."

In the photo, Shadia (a member of my first UVA class!) is loading a cassette of ten wafers into the load-lock of the MBE system. The door is then closed and the cassette pumped down to ultrahigh vacuum. A door below the cassette is then opened into the main vacuum system where wafers can be moved, one by one, into one of the two MBE deposition chambers.