Chad Young has clocked more than 30 years at North Little Rock’s WDD Architects, starting as an intern and working his way up to president and CEO. In the process, Young has been part of projects ranging from museums to college buildings to corporate headquarters.
In other words, he has designed a lot, built plenty and has just about seen everything in the complex world of architecture.
Almost.
On a late December morning, Young spoke excitedly about WDD’s just-completed build of the National Multi-User Silicon Carbide (MUSiC) Research and Fabrication Laboratory on the campus of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. If that sounds like a mouthful, just consider it a clean-room facility for the research and fabrication of microchips. For Young and his team, the opportunity to design and build the facility represented something unlike anything they had seen before. Indeed, it is the only openly accessible fabrication facility of its kind in the U.S. that is focused on silicon carbide electronics. The project was completed in partnership with DLR Group | Tsio Kobus Design.
Now, with the project having been put to bed, Young’s voice is still tinged with enthusiasm as he recounts one of the most unique and sophisticated projects of his three-decade career.
“What’s real interesting about this project is it’s kind of like designing a machine or some very scientific machinery,” Young said. “Everything is related to gases and piping and tooling and air filters.”
Photo by Russell Cothren, UA
Because microchips are measured and calibrated in nanometers, even the tiniest speck of contamination can create catastrophic damage. Therefore, the fabrication buildings where the microchips are created are not just a place to work; they are themselves an instrument of climate control and sterilization.
“There’s a lot of focus on making sure that there’s no particles that are floating around,” Young said. “So there’s a lot of heavy, heavy filtering that goes on with the heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems.”
Therein laid the newfangled challenge for WDD. The 22,000-square-foot building has room for researchers, students and industrial partners to participate in the prototyping and production of silicon carbide electronics, but it also features an eight-bay cleanroom to ensure the required environmental stability.
Making it all work required near-constant communication between WDD’s designers, the university and scientific specialists. To help coordinate everything, Young’s team used specialized 3D software programs, so all parties involved could see the effects of a proposed design in real-time.
As thrilled as he is with the facility, Young spoke with equal fondness about the process, which required alignment at all levels.
“It is a lot of coordination and a lot of precision,” he said. “And then we had a lot of experts on the team, so it made it really, really smooth.”
(Photos by Russell Cothren, UA)
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