It is impossible to predict how quickly science will evolve in such a facility. The first transistor was made in 1947; today, billions are produced per second worldwide, points out Charles Marcus, professor of physics, scientific director of Harvard's Center for Imaging and Mesoscale Structures, and chair of the LISE Client Committee. These transistors are becoming smaller and smaller, necessitating specialized laboratories and new ways of thinking about science.

"The reason that nanotechnology is interesting is that the world of physics actually changes at about the size scale between a hundred nanometers and a micron, to a domain in which quantum mechanics dictates the behavior of matter," explains Marcus. "As nanotechnology advances, the ideas that are part of the foundation of quantum mechanics, an 80-year-old subject, will become part of our working vocabulary as citizens of the modern world."

Paul Davies, a popular science writer, said in 1999: "The 19th century was known as the machine age. The 20th century will go down in history as the information age. I believe the 21st century will be the quantum age."

"This building will be Harvard's primary facility for exploring things smaller than a micron," says Marcus. "This is going to be a landmark building (when it opens in November 2006)."

Solving Problems in a Different Realm

Exploring quantum theory requires a certain leap of faith. Electrons, for example, which in the classical world are considered whole entities that act as a unit, can actually split apart on the nano scale and travel in a semiconductor in two directions at once. That means that, while in the classical world a transistor is either on or off, in the nano world of quantum physics it can be in both states at once, basically being both on and off at the same time. Multiply that in a network of circuits, all sending signals simultaneously, and the computing power increases exponentially.

Marcus gives as an example the "traveling salesman problem," which sounds simple but is impossible for even the most sophisticated computer in existence today: You have 50 cities you need to visit; figure the shortest route from one to the next and home again. In theory, a quantum computer could solve that problem.

Another example involves Internet security codes created by multiplying two very large prime numbers. It is very difficult for existing computers to determine the prime factors of a number. Factoring a 300-digit number on a current high-speed computer would take about 150,000 years, says Marcus. A quantum computer operating at the same speed could factor that number in about a second. Marcus and his team are working on developing that kind of machine.

"There are correlations in the quantum world that are not present in the classical world," says Marcus. "We can use those correlations to factor prime numbers.

"In this building, we are trying to build machines to behave like a quantum mechanical circuit," he says.

The building will contain five primary types of labs:

1) The 10,000-sf cleanroom, divided into six bays, will be used for making extremely small circuits and devices using photolithography (etching shapes onto the surface of semiconductor chips using light); electron beam writing (using electromagnetic radiation to etch the shapes); and physical vapor deposition (depositing thin films of material onto the surface of semiconductor chips).

2) The imaging suite will contain 10 extremely stable labs with low vibration, low electromagnetic interference, and tight temperature control criteria. These labs will contain scanning electron microscopes, tunneling electron microscopes, focused ion beam microscopes, and near field microscopes.

3) Biological prep labs, which have the capability to be converted to BSL-2 labs, will be used to prepare samples for analysis and use in the cleanroom and imaging labs. They will include biosafety cabinets, furnaces, polishers, wafer binders, and accommodations for an autoclave.

4) The material synthesis lab will have the capacity to handle equipment that generates extreme heat and uses intense liquid nitrogen. The lab includes furnaces, sputterers (devices used to deposit thin films onto the surface of semiconductor chips), and equipment for metal organic chemical vapor deposition (a chemical process for depositing thin films of various materials) and molecular beam epitaxy (the deposition of one or more pure materials onto a wafer, one layer of atoms at a time, under ultra-high vacuum, forming a perfect crystal).

5) Interdivisional Research Labs (IRLs) for faculty appointments are designed primarily for dry experiments, and can accommodate high power consumption. They will contain atomic force microscopes, rooms shielded from radio frequency, helium 3 magnetic refrigerators, dilution refrigerators, molecular beam lasers, and other equipment for condensed matter physics. These labs require vibration control, electromagnetic interference control, and noise control. About one-quarter of them are designed for wet/hooded use.

Designed for Interaction

The variety of labs in the building encourages the kinds of interdisciplinary research Harvard is trying to nurture.

"There was a time when you could say, 'What I do is nanoscience,'" says Marcus. "That time has passed. Now we say, 'I study X on the nano scale.' Chemists and physicists find themselves in the same domain."

Bringing them together is not always easy.

"We have a very subtle problem," explains Marcus. "Do you want Researcher A to learn what Researcher B is doing, and Researcher B to learn what Researcher A is doing, and then have them go their separate ways? Or do you want the researchers getting together and pursuing something totally new? We are trying something here that is extremely hard: to create a new kind of scientific enterprise where people slowly change the problems they're working on."

That was accomplished both with the location of the building, and the way it was integrated into the site.

"The intention of the site is to place it (LISE) at the nexus of the physical sciences and engineering portion of campus," says Mark Reed, principal architect of William Wilson Associated Architects. Reed worked in conjunction with Spanish design architect Jose Rafael Moneo, who serves on the faculty of the Harvard Design School and was the former chairman of the University's Architecture Department.

The building physically links with the Division of Engineering and Applied Science and the Department of Physics, and is across the street from the Chemistry and Life Sciences buildings.

"An important connection is to the theoretical physics department because we can't understand all of these things ourselves, and we don't want to work in isolation from the theoreticians," adds Marcus. "We built a bridge so the theoreticians could walk over. Physicists in particular, and scientists in general, would rather switch fields than walk down the hall. But if we create space where you talk to your neighbor whom you might not otherwise talk to, collaborations will evolve. People will change depending on their environment."

The new building is connected floor-by-floor with the adjacent Gordon McKay Engineering and Applied Sciences Building.

"We destroyed all group meeting rooms in McKay," says Marcus. "Researchers there now have to come into this space in their daily life."

The entire third floor of LISE is designed to be the "social floor," with conference and seminar space for five to 30 people, and an expansive seating area with views of the reconstructed quad. The first floor contains a two-story café space, overlooked by a second-floor lounge.

Building in a Tight Space

The qualities that make this building effective—extreme vibration control within the labs, and proximity to other science buildings—also created daunting engineering and architectural challenges, says Reed. To squeeze the building into an existing courtyard, two-thirds of the new construction is completely underground; seven stories of only 6,400 gsf each form the tower.

"The first part of the job involved clearing the site of all of the utilities and plumbing and ethernet that flowed through the courtyard," says Marcus.

"Because the scientific program of the building demanded such a large amount of vibrationally stable space, we needed to optimize the slab-on-grade footprint," explains Reed.

As a result, they constructed a 38,000-sf footprint below grade that extends to within 5 feet of all five adjacent buildings. They used slurry wall construction to obviate the need to underpin each existing building, and to be able to dig deep enough to accommodate the 25 feet of clear space above the cleanrooms, which is needed to hold the extensive air handling equipment and ductwork.

The bottom floor—constructed on 20-ton concrete blocks resting on isolation springs to mitigate vibration—contains electron microscopes and other laboratory equipment. The floor above that is the cleanroom space, topped off with the ducting and corridor for moving chemicals.

One of the unusual design features was the construction of a "moat" dug alongside the McKay building where it attaches to LISE. This serves three purposes: First, it allows natural light into the underground areas, thus making the space much more versatile. Second, it makes it legal to store hazardous materials underground, which is not typically allowed because of the fire hazard. The moat raises the profile of the "underground" space and makes it accessible to fire trucks on more than one side, which satisfies the fire safety requirement for this kind of storage. Third, engineers expanded the partial basement of McKay into a full basement.

Another design concern was the tower obstructing the views and flow of foot traffic through the courtyard.

"Rafael Moneo had an ingenious but complex idea of suspending the above-grade portions of the building on three curved, sculptured legs that allows the campus paths and green space to pass literally through and under the building," explains Reed. "This required the structural engineers to come up with a three-dimensional vierendeel truss to transfer all the loads of the tower in four simple points as it reached the ground."

While this complex engineering and construction is going on outside, students and scientists on all sides are still in the business of conducting research. That required the construction team to learn some scheduling quirks of students and scientists, says Marcus. There are no "weekends," during which time it would be okay to shut off the power; and they are not allowed to shut the power off between 3 p.m. and 6 a.m., when graduate students run most of their experiments.

"Since typically graduate students don't get to work until 11 a.m. anyway, it is only a few hours of disruption," says Marcus.

By Lisa Wesel

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