The Nanofabrication Core Lab (NCL) includes three areas: a class 100 cleanroom laboratory, a microfluidics laboratory and a thin film laboratory. Each year users fabricate and characterize a wide variety of structures and devices at the nano- and microscale for many applications, such as light emitting diodes, bio-sensors, solar cells, transistors, flexible electronics and photonic devices. The lab has supported over 100 PIs including industrial users and other universities inside and outside of the Kingdom. Our users, who we regularly train to independently use the equipment, are well equipped for future careers in nanofabrication and the semiconductor industry. Over the next 10 years many advanced applications and devices will utilize significantly more materials, which need to be integrated and processed to achieve miniaturization plus cost and energy reductions.
Dr. Kenneth Kennedy is currently Lab Director for the Nanofabrication Core Lab, KAUST. He received his PhD degree from Sheffield University, UK. He has worked in the semiconductor fabrication industry since 1998 when he joined Hewlett-Packard, UK and he also worked for Agilent Technologies, Singapore as a technology transfer engineer. Before arriving in Saudi Arabia he worked for the National Epitaxial Facility at the University of Sheffield where he was device fabrication and cleanroom manager where he also co-founded a spin-out company designing and manufacturing Quantum Cascade lasers. His research interests have previously been in photonic devices, especially semiconductor lasers for communications and trace gas sensing. He has co-authored over 70 research publications and several patents.