This page describes the available research and faculty profiles.

Facilities for Research and Study


Controls Systems Research Laboratory

The Controls Systems Research Laboratory is used to study real-time and computer controlled systems.  the Laboratory has several Sun Ultra Workstations running a real-time Unix operating system.  These workstations are networked to a set of dSpace miniboxes (microcontrollers) and a network of Personal Computers (PC's) running QNX (a real-time version of UNIX).  The dSpace miniboxes and PC network are connected to a variety of Quanser servo systems.  The lab provides a flexible computing environment for the empirical study of real-time networked control systems.  Research work in this laboratory has been sponsored by the Army Research Office,  and General Motors.


Faculty: Antsaklis, Lemmon

Go to the ISIS Homepage.

Cryogenic Characterization Laboratory

It houses an Oxford Heliox cryostat with a He^3 insert capable of reaching temperatures of 300 mK. The cryostat has a superconducting magnet producing a 9/11 Tesla flux density. Additionally, the laboratory has a Janis/Leiden Milikelvin 200 dilution refrigerator system capable of 15 mK temperatures, along with a 9/11 Tesla superconducting magnet. Low noise electrical measurements are made using lock-in amplifiers and resistance bridges. Assorted permanent magnets, Gaussmeters, transfer lines, etc. are also available.


Faculty: Snider, Bernstein

Device Simulation Laboratory

The Device Simulation Laboratory has several Sun-4 Workstations and a Stardent minicomputer.


Faculty: Porod, Lent

General Facilities

The department's computing resources are all fully networked into the Internet. The department also has its own machine and electronics shop run by a full-time technician. The Solid-State Laboratories are overseen by a full-time professional and a full-time technician; a full-time professional is employed to managed the department's computer facilities.


The College supports a cluster of 100 Sun-4 Workstations for research and instruction. A 16 node IBM SP-1 and an IBM 3081 mainframe are available in the University Computing Center for high performance computing.

Laboratory for Image and Signal Analysis

The members of the Laboratory for Image and Signal Analysis perform research in signal, image and video processing. Current interests include image/video coding, blind equalization, multidimensional system theory, image/video enhancement, array signal processing, digital filters, vector quantization, computed tomography, and image/video restoration.


The laboratory has a dozen high-end Sun-4 Workstation, equipment for the processing and real-time display of HDTV sequences, cameras, a frame grabber, a flat bed scanner and several high definition 24-bit color monitors and printers.

Faculty: Bauer, Huang, Liu, Sauer, Stevenson

Nanoelectronics Laboratory

The Nanoelectronics Laboratory is equipped for dc and wideband ac measurements of devices and circuits. The laboratory houses an Agilent 8510XF Network Analyzer for S-parameter measurements from 45 MHz to 110 GHz. On-wafer probing is provided via a Cascade Summit probe station using 1 mm coax-to-coplanar probes with dc to 100 GHz bandwidth. Also available is an Anritsu 3680V Universal Test Fixture for providing dc to 60 GHz coax-to-microstrip or coax-to-coplanar transmission line connections to semiconductors and ceramic substrates. In 2001, an NSF Major Research Instrumentation grant provided equipment for precision current-voltage (Agilent 4155B semiconductor parameter analyzer) and impedance measurements (Agilent 4294A precision impedance analyzer) from 40 Hz to 110 MHz, 300 mW to 500 MW, with triaxially-guarded cabling and low current and voltage resolution (10 fA and 2 µV). Samples are connected using a Summit 11861 variable-temperature (-65 to 200 °C) probe station consisting of a nitrogen enclosed wafer chuck capable of handling 200 mm semiconductor wafers to sub-centimeter-sized substrates. The Agilent 4294A also has the 16452 impedance/ permitivity fixture for the dielectric spectroscopy of fluids and the 16451B fixture for spectroscopy of solid dielectrics. A Tektronix 370 Curve Tracer has capability for precision measurement of current-voltage characteristics up to 220 W with 1 nA and 2 mV resolution. In 2000, the Intel Corporation donated five 933 MHz Pentium III workstations to the laboratory.

Faculty: Seabaugh


ND Nanofabrication Facility

The ND Nanofabrication Facility is equipped to fabricate ICs and devices in both silicon and III-V compounds with geometries as small as 0.01 microns. 5-micron CMOS gate arrays with over 2500 transistors have been fabricated and tested. Housed in cleanroom areas are a photomask generator and step-and-repeat camera for fabricating photomasks, a mask duplicating system, and several contact mask aligners. A GCA 6300 wafer stepper is also in place. Metal evaporation is carried out in one of four vacuum evaporators, including a 6-source e-beam system. The lab currently has 14 tubes for diffusion and LPCVD. Additional processing equipment includes a plasma resist strip system, PECVD for oxides, nitrides and poly, and a Plasmatherm RIE. Process analysis is performed utilizing several optical microscopes, a JEOL IC-25 SEM and a Hitachi S-4500 field emission SEM. A Leitz MPV-SP system as well as Gaertner ellipsometer measure dielectric film thicknesses, and an Alphastep 200 surface profilometer is used to measure film properties. Other process monitoring equipment include a resist thickness analyzer and an automated 4-point probe. Nanolithography is performed with an Amray 1400, 50 kV SEM converted for electron beam lithography applications. Electronics measurement capabilities include a cryogenic dewar with iron core magnet, and a helium 3 cold finger cryostat dewar for investigations at 300 mK and 11 T. Additionally, an HP 4145B SPA, a Tektronix 803A 20 GHz TDR, an HP 18-GHz S-parameter test set, an automated Hall effect system, Keithly Models 90 I-V and 82 C-V systems and several electrometers and current sources are used for advanced materials, device, and circuit analysis. A bonding station and four probe stations, are used for connecting electrical signals to circuits under test.


Faculty: Bernstein, Hall, Kosel, Merz, Seabaugh, Snider

Optoelectronics and Photonics Laboratories

The Optoelectronics Laboratory has: a 10-watt Argon-ion laser and a CW Ti:Sapphire laser; a 0.5 m spectrometer/spectrograph with photomultiplier, InGaAs PIN, and photodiode array detectors; a digital storage oscilloscope; a DSP dual phase lock-in amplifier and optical chopper for photoluminescence measurements; diode lasers with current and thermoelectric temperature controllers; infrared viewer; data acquisition computers including a frame grabber with digital cameras; reticon line-scan camera; acousto-optic modulator; power supplies and pulse generators; optical power meters; BPM_CAD integrated optics modeling software; a vibration isolated optical table; various precision positioning and optical imaging components and hardware; a laser diode probe test station; and an oxidation furnace, wafer lapping and polishing station, and other optoelectronic device processing equipment. In addition, the Photonics Laboratory (a teaching facility) includes 5 HeNe lasers and extensive optical hardware, components, and instrumentation available for research during off semesters of the course.


Faculty: Hall

Structural Dynamics and Control/Earthquake Engineering Laboratory

Jointly with the Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences, the department operates the Structural Dynamics and Control/Earthquake Laboratory. Central to the facility is a 4'-square aluminum slip table, with maximum displacement of +/-2", maximum velocityof +/-35"/sec., and maximum acceleration of +/-4gs for a 1000 lb. test load over a frequency range of 0-50 Hz. The intent of having such a facility is to experimentally verify response reduction strategies developed at Notre Dame.


Faculty: Sain

Wireless Communications Lab

The communications group is establishing a wireless testbed facility in support of digital communications research. This testbed is built around a 200 kHz spectral allocation in the land mobile radio (LMR) band; a license for this spectral allocation was purchased in Fall 1998 as part of the FCC's "220 MHz Phase II" auction, and equipment is being purchased under a 1999 grant from the National Science Foundations' Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program.
When complete, this testbed will effect narrowband digital radio communication between a base station in Fitzpatrick Hall and mobile transceivers in the greater South Bend area. The purpose of the testbed is to provide a realistic test environment for the development of error control and interference mitigation algorithms as well as high-speed analog-to-digital converters for mobile receivers.

Faculty: Fuja