NOTICE OF INTENT-Silicon Sublimation Source

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Acquisition Management Division intends to negotiate with United Mineral & Chemical Corp, located in Lyndhurst, NJ, on a sole source basis under the authority of FAR Subpart 13.106-1(b), soliciting from a single source, for a Silicon Sublimation Source.   

Specific Requirements are as follows:

The specific requirements are:

1. Minimum Requirements:

The Contractor shall provide one (1) silicon sublimation source that meets the following specifications:

1. The source must be equipped with an intrinsic silicon filament.
2. The source must have preheating mechanisms to enable intrinsic silicon filament sublimation.
3. The source shall have high purity single crystal silicon shields that cover all metallic parts that face the target substrate.
4. The source shall be capable of operating at deposition/growth rates lower than 2 Angstroms per minute.
5. The source shall be equipped with a water-cooled shroud to dissipate heat and protect the UHV system from silicon coating.
6. The source shall be equipped with a shutter.
7. The source must be UHV compatible (<5 x 10-11 Torr materials).
8. The source shall be able to withstand at least 200 degrees Celsius during vacuum processing.
9. The combined source and water-cooled shroud shall be equipped with a 4.5” outer diameter CF flange to be mounted on a UHV system.
10. The source shall include a thermocouple to measure the temperature of the sublimation cell and calibrate sublimation flux.

This shall be provided and accomplished in accordance with these specifications.

NAICS Code is 325998 –All Other Miscellaneous Chemical Product and Preparation  Manufacturing, with a Size Standard of 500 employees. NIST anticipates negotiating and awarding a firm-fixed-price purchase order to United Mineral & Chemical Corp for this requirement.

Interested parties that can demonstrate they could satisfy the requirement listed above for NIST must clearly and unambiguously identify their capability to do so in writing on or before the response date for this notice. This notice of intent is not a solicitation. Information submitted in response to this notice will be used solely to determine whether competitive procedures could be used for this acquisition. If competitive procedures are not used it is estimated that an award will be issued by 7/30/2023. Any questions regarding this notice must be submitted in writing via email to angela.hitt@nist.gov. All responses to this notice of intent must be submitted to angela.hitt@nist.gov no later than the date and time provided herein this posting.

JUSTIFICATION FOR OTHER THAN FULL AN OPEN COMPETITION:

Market research resulted in United Mineral & Chemical Corp being the only vendor that can supply this product. However, United Mineral & Chemical Corp has a higher deposition rate and as a result, less flux control capability, and is not suitable for our application. NIST requires a silicon cell that can be heated by direct current to produce silicon sublimation which can provide an extremely low deposition rate and therefore excellent flux control. It is important to have high purity Si shielding parts that cover all the metallic parts of the evaporator that are facing the target substrate and that are subject to high temperature and ion/electron bombardment.

Additionally, NIST uses the exact same equipment (SUSIs) on several other similar STM setups in NIST labs, and have tested e-beam evaporation tools on those systems for comparison.  On those setups NIST has found that only the SUSI achieves the required growth quality for NIST’s devices to function.  This also means that all of NIST’s successful procedures for device encapsulation have been developed on a SUSI and constitute years of experimental effort that is applicable only to a SUSI tool; attempting to use a different tool (e.g. an e-beam evaporator) would therefore require undue  research burden.