Berkeley Lab is home to the "Nanowriter," an ultra-high-resolution electron-beam lithography machine that gives the Laboratory a world-class tool for nanostructure research.

Instead of lenses, x-rays are focused by zone plates. This one made at the Nanowriter has rings only a few billionths of a meter apart.

"In the mid-1990s we saw the need for advanced electron-beam lithographic capability," says Erik Anderson, who oversees operations of the Nanowriter, "and we were in the right place at the right time for funding."

The primary purpose of the Nanowriter is to etch patterns onto a recording media via a narrow energized beam of electrons. Berkeley Lab's Nanowriter can generate an electron beam at energies up to 100,000 volts with a diameter of only 2.5 to 5 nanometers — that's about ten thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.

With a stage controlled by a laser interferometer, the Nanowriter can write patterns with a high degree of accuracy over an area some 150 millimeters wide. It can be used to create "quantum-dot" electronics and magnetic thin-film devices, and to "stitch" together adjacent areas of circuitry.

• More about the Nanowriter

Beams of x-rays a hundred million times brighter than those from the most powerful x-ray tubes: that's just one of the advantages offered by the premier beams of Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source, an electron synchrotron facility that generates the world's brightest ultraviolet and "soft" x-ray light for scientific and technological research.

Housed inside a two-acre building under the landmark dome built in 1940 for Ernest Lawrence's 184-Inch Cyclotron, the ALS uses a combination of accelerators and powerful magnets to create a ribbon-shaped beam of highly energized electrons no thicker than a human hair. This beam orbits a vacuumized storage ring approximately 200 meters (656 feet) in circumference for several hours at a time. Light, primarily x-rays and ultraviolet light, is extracted from the electron beam using arrays of unique "wiggler" and "undulator" magnets.

The ALS produces x-ray beams a hundred million times brighter than those from the most powerful x-ray tubes. LIGA beamlines can create microdevices like these AXSUN Technologies alignment structures for optical switchers.

Designated a national user facility by the U.S. Department of Energy, the ALS has hosted hundreds of scientific groups from across the nation since it opened in 1993. These researchers come to shed ALS light on mysteries in the biosciences, materials sciences, and environmental studies.

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