Use of Veeco Gen II MBE

The costs of operating a MBE growth system are very high. However, many of these costs are fixed costs and do not really scale proportionally with system usage, thus it is highly advantageous to use the MBE systems as much as possible. The objective of this proposal is to capitalize on this available time by allowing MP Technologies to use the MBE system when it is not needed by the Center for Quantum Devices. By allowing MP Technologies to pay for using this time Northwestern fully recovers the cost of this time; but far more importantly, by proportionally assigning a share of the fixed costs to MPT, Northwestern is able to not only recapture this lost opportunity to grow, but also to reduce the Center for Quantum Devices’ share of the substantial fixed costs allowing for a more efficient usage of existing funds. These funds which no longer need to go towards the fixed costs of operating a MBE can now be applied to more productive research tasks. This will be the main benefit to Northwestern University.