Some discoveries require ultra, ultra clean rooms

Discoveries in materials science require clean rooms of Class-100 (including air control, temperature control, humidity control, vibration control, etc.). Class-100 also means that in a cubic foot there are less than 100 dust particles that are larger than half a micron.  

That makes a clean room 100 TIMES cleaner than a hospital operating room. 

The illustration below shows a dust particle compared to the size of the COVID-19 virus, wildfire smoke or even pollen. The image gives us a better understanding of how dust can interfere with the precision required to observe on such a small scale.  

Relative size of particles from Visual Capitalist

Canadians are forging new paths for progress on a global scale 

Clean rooms that will enable future discovery are part of the Canadian-led leadership investment to build the Tom and Mary Beck Center for Advanced and Intelligent Materials (C-AIM) at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel. Clean rooms are the foundation of the C-AIM building, required to take materials science research to the next level of discovery. 

Research in materials science has existed in various departments at the Weizmann even before it became more formalized as a discipline in 1991.  

C-AIM will house all that expertise under one roof, which will also advance materials science research through the much-needed state-of-the-art processing found in clean rooms (to be called the ABC Canadian Quantum Foundry). The clean rooms will focus on three core areas of vital research. Each focus will further enable the next level of discoveries in the recent examples provided below: 

• • Living materials and life-inspired materials | For example, Prof. Roy Bar-Ziv’s lab is using artificial cells (etched into a silicon chip) to safely produce specific sub-parts of cells. This could be used for highly pathogenic viruses like COVID-19, that have been historically dangerous to study. This process could give scientists around the world, a new tool to fight viruses safely or the ability to rapidly conduct thousands of medical tests all at once.

• • Materials for energy and sustainability | For example,  David Cahen’s lab is working with a mysterious material called halide perovskites, which can be unusually efficient at converting solar energy to electrical energy. The lab’s recent finding explaining the material’s self-healing properties could mean a new approach to controlling properties in other similar materials, to cut down the enormous cost and ingenuity required to get a similar low defect rate in today’s electronics.

• Quantum materials | Quantum materials rely on strange or unknown phenomena, like the electron discovery. At Weizmann, for example, Gilad Haran’s lab has created a ‘bowtie shape’ structure that can absorb light and concentrate it at the centre point in the bow, creating a strong electric field. When the scientists then placed a small piece of crystalline matter to the center point, the crystals also reemitted light, and ultimately created entities called ‘polaritons’, a state where light waves and vibration waves in matter are mixed. With an especially strong microscope, the group was able to — for the first time — closely scan and map polariton activity. The discovery has many implications including potential future research in developing quantum applications, control of chemical processes and in designing new materials.

Discovery must occur for progress to happen. And, it is with that sentiment that we hope we can also partner with you to help fuel further progress.