FABRICATION OF TAPERED DOPED-SILICON MICROPILLARS

This is a SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE for market research purposes. THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR QUOTATIONS. INFORMATION RECEIVED WILL BE USED FOR MARKET RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY.

Document Type:  Sources Sought Notice 

Notice Number NIST-FY25-CHIPS-0101

Response Deadline: October 31, 2025, 12:00 PM, EST. 

Title: Fabrication of tapered doped-silicon micropillars

Anticipated NAICS Code: 541713 – Research and Development in Nanotechnology or 334413 – Semiconductor and Related Device Manufacturing

Contracting Office Address

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Office of Acquisition and Agreements Management

Acquisition Management Division

100 Bureau Drive, Mail Stop 1640

Gaithersburg, MD 20899-1640

This is a Sources Sought Notice ONLY. Requests for copies of a solicitation will not receive a response.

This Notice is for planning purposes only and is not a Request for Proposal, Request for Quotation, or an obligation on the part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for conducting a follow-on acquisition.  NIST does not intend to award a contract based on this Notice or otherwise pay for the information requested. No entitlement or payment of direct or indirect costs or charges by NIST will arise because of submission of responses to this Notice and NIST use of such information.

NO SOLICITATION DOCUMENTS EXIST AT THIS TIME.

NIST is seeking information on commercial vendors that can provide fabricated arrays of tapered/conical doped-silicon micro-pillars on silicon wafer substrates.    

Background Information

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), as part of the CHIPS for America program, is developing doped-silicon test and reference materials for use with atom probe tomography and other complementary materials characterization techniques. The reference materials will be most useful to analysts if provided as sharpened micro-pillar arrays that can be directly analyzed in the atom probe instrument.  

Description of Requirement

The Contractor shall meet the following minimum requirements:

1. Be able to work with either 100 mm or 150 mm silicon wafer starting materials. The wafers will be provided either as bulk-doped or will have an epi-film deposited on the surface (film will be micrometers in thickness).
2. Be able to fabricate arrays of tapered/conical doped-silicon micro-pillars from the silicon wafer starting materials.
   1. The dopants will be common dopants for silicon, such as boron and/or phosphorus.
   2. The rough dimensions for each tapered/conical micro-pillar should be 150 micrometers in height and 75 micrometers wide at the base.
   3. The tip of each micro-pillar should be circular in cross section and roughly 100 nm in diameter to permit direct data acquisition in the atom probe instrument.
   4. The number of micro-pillars in each micro-pillar array will be 22 or 25.
   5. Each micro-pillar will be spaced roughly a few hundred micrometers from its neighbors.
   6. Since these are prospective reference materials, the epi-film or near-surface region of the bulk doped wafer starter material must be captured in the tips of the fabricated micro-pillars.
   7. The micro-pillar array pattern will be a custom asymmetric layout to permit the reference materials to be compatible with commercial atom probe data acquisition automation packages. NIST will provide a schematic of the array patterns.
3. Be able to fabricate additional features on the micro-pillar array coupons, such as plateaus, to permit analysts to perform complementary analyses using other materials characterization techniques.
4. Be able to dice the fabricated micro-pillar arrays into coupons with rough dimensions 10 millimeters by 5 millimeters.
5. Be able to work with small lot sizes for processing and fabrication, since these prospective materials are part of a reference material development effort.

Companies able to provide such services are requested to email a detailed response describing their abilities to both Cielo.Ibarra@nist.gov and Nathali.Clark@chips.gov, no later than the response date for this sources sought notice. 

Small businesses are defined under the associated NAICS code for this effort:

1. 334413 – Semiconductor and Related Device Manufacturing, as those domestic sources having 500 employees or less. Please include your company’s size classification in any response to this notice.
2. 541713 - Research and Development in Nanotechnology, as those domestic sources having 1000 employees or less. Please include your company’s size classification in any response to this notice.

The report should include any information relevant to your capabilities. Also, please provide the following information as part of the response to this sources sought notice:

1. Name of company/companies that are authorized provide services, including address, and a point of contact for the company (name, phone number, fax number and email address), and UEI number
2. Indication of whether the services are currently on one or more GSA Federal Supply Schedule contracts or any other government-wide contracts. If so, please provide the applicable contract number(s).
3. Identify any aspects of the NIST market research notice, including instructions, and draft minimum specifications in the “Description of Requirement” section you cannot meet and state why.  Please offer suggestions for how the market research notice and draft minimum specifications could be made more competitive.
4. Identify any customers in the public or private sectors to which you provided the recommended or similar services/equipment.  Include customer(s) information: company name, phone number, point of contact, email address.  
5. Minimum process and fabrication lot size requirements.
6. Any other relevant information that is not listed above which the Government should consider in developing its minimum performance requirements.
7. For the NAICS code listed in this notice: 
   1. Indicate whether your company is (a) a small business or (b) other than small business.  See the Table of Small Business Size Standards and the associated .pdf download file for small business size standards and additional information. 
   2. If you believe the NAICS code listed in this notice is not the best NAICS code for the type of product addressed in this notice, identify an alternative NAICS code that you believe would be more appropriate for the planned procurement.   

QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS NOTICE 

Questions regarding this notice may be submitted via email to the Primary Point of Contact. Questions should be submitted so that they are received by September 19,2025. If the Contracting Officer determines that providing a written amendment to this notice to document question(s) received would benefit other potential respondents, the questions would be anonymized, and a written response to such question(s) would be provided via an amendment to this notice. 

IMPORTANT NOTES 

This notice is for market research purposes and should not be construed as a commitment by NIST to issue a solicitation or ultimately award a contract.  There is no solicitation available at this time. 

This notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response.  

NIST reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. 

Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to determine the organization’s capability.  

Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted.  

After a review of the responses received, a synopsis and solicitation may be published on GSA’s eBuy or SAM.gov. However, responses to this notice will not be considered an adequate response to any such solicitation(s). 

Thank you for taking the time to submit a response to this request.