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WUTR

If you happen to find yourself on the SUNY Polytechnic Institute's campus, it's hard to miss the massive glass building being built off to the side. That building is known as Quad-C which stands for Computer Chip Commercialization Center and is on track to becoming a hub for nanotechnology right here in the Mohawk Valley.

"We're in that phase now of the exterior of the building is really almost finished, it's come along and now we're putting in all of that support infrastructure, you know what makes nano-manufacturing, nano-manufacturing,” says Dr. Robert Geer, Senior Vice President and Chief Operation Officer of SUNY Polytechnic Institute.

Dr. Geer says he's been watching the transformation of Quad-C from the very beginning and is amazed how far crews have come in just over a year. Inside the building, clean rooms are being built, a construction process that calls for very special protocol.

"You have to have a clean environment because you’re looking at the nanoscale. A particle of dust can destroy an entire portion of a wafer,” said Dr. Geer.

Dr. Geer explains that nanotechnology is in almost every device that we use on a daily basis like a cell phone or a computer and the chips that make these essentials work will soon be manufactured right inside the walls of Quad-C in special clean rooms.

There are two levels of clean room being built that require special air ventilation systems to filter out all of the dust particles. Crew members working inside these rooms must suit up in special clean gear. Dr. Geer says they're expected to be 50,000 square feet.

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