How hands-on experience at WNF led a mechanical engineering student to Intel

Jimmy is posing in the clean room covered in safety gear.

April 29, 2025 — Four years ago, as an Engineering Dean’s Scholar, Jimmy Phan was listening to a lecture from the College of Engineering’s associate dean, Dan Ratner. Ratner told Phan’s cohort about the Washington Nanofabrication Facility (WNF), an open-access nanofabrication facility at the UW, and the opportunities for undergraduates to work there. By his second year of school, Phan was employed as an undergraduate lab assistant in the facility. Students working in the WNF have a unique opportunity to receive on-the-job training from…

Precision at the smallest scale

Workers in lab coats and safety gear working in the yellow-tinted clean room.

By Chelsea Yates Photos by University of Washington Step inside the Washington Nanofabrication Facility, where tiny tech is transforming research in quantum physics, chips, medicine and more. Imagine a high-tech workshop where scientists and engineers craft objects so small they can’t be seen with the naked eye — or even a standard microscope. These tiny structures — nanostructures — are thousands of times smaller than a strand of hair. And they are essential for faster computers, better smartphones and life-saving…

WNF student lands dream internship at Nvidia

Jan. 27, 2025 — In the University of Washington’s Washington Nanofabrication Facility (WNF), undergraduate lab assistants have a unique opportunity to receive on-the-job training from research engineers and network with professionals in advanced electronics, nanotechnology, semiconductors and fabrication-related jobs. Fourth-year electrical and computer engineering major Prithvi Krishnaswamy’s work in the WNF helped him land a summer internship at Nvidia, a company that designs hardware and software for the high-performance computing (HPC) market. Krishnaswamy interned at its Durham, North Carolina office. WNF:…

WNF director in working group targeting billions in CHIPS and Science Act funding for Washington state

Dec. 17. 2024 — Maria Huffman, director of the University of Washington’s Washington Nanofabrication Facility, is part of a new, state-wide group of leaders from universities, research institutions, technology companies and the government who aim to strengthen the state’s semiconductor industry. The group, organized by the Washington Department of Commerce, will work to attract federal funding through the CHIPS and Sciences Act.

Washington Nanofabrication Facility Updates

Nov. 27, 2023 — Scientists and engineers working in the Washington Nanofabrication Facility (WNF) have been busy over the past few months. In August, the WNF hosted the biannual Northwest Nanotechnology Laboratory Alliance (NWNLA) with generous support from Montana State University and the Molecular Analysis Facility. The goal of the biannual conference is to build partnerships between labs and foster community collaboration between lab users and vendors. This year, vendors and lab staff attended a variety of presentations, round table discussions,…

UW NanoES announces awardees of Northwest Nanotechnology Infrastructure seed grants

The Institute for Nano-engineered Systems (NanoES) announced the award of four seed grants in support of the use of nanotechnology tools to develop new, innovative technologies and devices. Awardees will receive up to $10,000 to carry out work in the UW’s Washington Nanofabrication Facility (WNF) and the Molecular Analysis Facility (MAF), key nanotechnology facilities in the Northwest Nanotechnology Infrastructure, which is one of 16 sites in the NSF’s National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI) program.

Northwest Nanotechnology Infrastructure announces new seed grants

Two people looking at a laptop inside the WNF cleanroom

Jan. 6, 2022 — To support the use of nanotechnology tools to develop innovative, new technologies, the Northwest Nanotechnology Infrastructure (NNI) is offering seed grants to new, first-time users for work to be conducted in our fabrication or characterization facilities. These grants are designed to help users build and characterize prototypes, obtain preliminary results and conduct proof of concept studies. NNI is one of 16 sites in the National Science Foundation’s National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI) program. As the Pacific Northwest node…

Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain

Researchers at the UW and Princeton University have developed an ultracompact camera the size of a coarse grain of salt. The system relies on metasurfaces fabricated at Washington Nanofabrication Facility to produce crisp, full-color images on par with a conventional camera lens 500,000 times larger in volume, the researchers reported in Nature Communications.

Small Business awards from DARPA and NASA fuel growth of UW spinout Tunoptix

WNF user Tunoptix, co-founded by UW Electrical & Computer Engineering Professors Arka Majumdar and Karl F. Böhringer, received a $1,500,000 Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase II award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I award from NASA to advance their meta-optics imaging systems.

Bringing light into computers to accelerate AI and machine learning

UW ECE faculty members Sajjad Moazeni and Mo Li are leading a multi-institutional research team, which has received a four-year grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a new type of computer chip that uses laser light for AI and machine learning computation. The research team is working toward combining its phase-change material with microelectronics circuitry at the Washington Nanofabrication Facility.