Facilities

ASR&D occupies a leased facility located in Arnold Maryland, approximately 30 minutes south of Baltimore. This facility consists of 2200 square feet, including an office area, a class 10,000 clean room for device assembly, wafer probe testing, chemical fume hood work, gas sensor concentration testing, semiconductor furnace procedures, and biological procedures, and general purpose laboratory and manufacturing space. ASR&D has been in continuous operation for 5 years, and currently has six employees and several regular consultants that contribute on an as-needed basis. ASR&D has an in-house capability to design and manufacture SAW sensors in low volumes, with all of the equipment necessary for low volume assembly and test of SAW devices, and for low to moderate volume electronics production. ASR&D's ability to manufacture SAW sensors and interrogation systems in-house is unique among small U.S. based firms, and provides the company with the flexibility necessary to customize sensors and systems for specific customers and applications.

Selected equipment includes:

• Class 10,000 clean room

• Environics 4040 gas dilution system with humidification

• Labconco ProtectorTM fume hood

• Millipore DQ-III (18 MΩ type 1) deionized water system

• Laurell Technologies wafer/die spinner

• Kulicke & Soffa 4124 Gold ball wire binder (manual)

• Wentworth 0900 wafer probe station with DC and RF probes (4 micromanipulators)

• Sun Microsystems EC12 Oven

• Carbolite 1200°C Semiconductor furnace

• Agilent E5070B RF Network Analyzer (with time domain analysis)

• Agilent MSO6104 Mixed Signal Oscilloscope

• Signal Generator

• Low power (dissecting) and high power optical microscopes

• STP-350 High Precision Manual Stencil Printer

• LPK Protomat PC Board CNC milling machine

• EC-93 Automatic Pick-and-Place machine

• Solder Reflow Oven

• Wave Soldering Oven

• Tabletop CNC 4-dimensional milling machine

• Matlab with Simulink and all relevant toolboxes and blocksets

• ORCAD Schematic Capture software

• Assorted power supplies, hand tools, and RF/DC components, connectors, and cables

• Dessicator, ultrasonic bath, analytical scale, and assorted laboratory glassware and accessories for handling chemicals of interest

In addition to its in-house capabilities, ASR&D has established an arrangement with the University of Maryland, College Park, to allow company personnel access to the clean room nanofabrication facility for wafer fabrication and advanced analysis system use. Together with the device assembly and packaging capabilities described above, this provides ASR&D with complete SAW sensor and sensor system electronics prototyping capabilities. ASR&D is an affiliate member of the Baltimore-based Emerging Technology Center (ETC) incubator program. This program provides ASR&D with access to numerous business development and legal resources to aid in company growth.