POLICY NEWS

March 2003 21

SuperSTEM at the cutting edge

The world’s highest resolution analyticalmicroscope has been unveiled at the DaresburyLaboratory in the UK. The SuperSTEM (scanning transmissionelectron microscope) represents a keytechnological breakthrough because advancesin computing and instrument design haveenabled the correction of spherical aberrationin the objective lens of the microscope. “Thisunique national SuperSTEM facility will allowUK scientists to see and analyze individualatoms. This will enable progress in very manyfields of industry,” explains Peter Goodhew ofLiverpool University, director of the project.These diverse fields range from catalysis tosemiconductor lasers to new magneticrecording media. STEM and electron energyloss analysis (EELS) data from the SuperSTEMwill be available for viewing by scientistsaround the world via the Internet.The groundbreaking new facility is part of a $7 million, five-year project involving scientistsfrom the Universities of Liverpool, Cambridge,Glasgow, and Leeds. A second instrument willbe installed in the purpose-built, low-vibrationlab in Daresbury next year. “The SuperSTEMproject brings universities and a national

laboratory together to provide a world-classresearch facility,” commented UK scienceminister Lord Sainsbury at the official openingceremony. “The potential applications arisingfrom the research it supports will be of greatbenefit to society, and demonstrate theimportance of investing in scientific excellence.World-class facilities such as SuperSTEM areessential if we are to stay at the cutting edgeof research.”

Main photo shows Ondrej Krivanek installing the aberrationcorrector, supplied by Nion Co., on superSTEM 1. Inset imageshows Si (blue) and Ni (red) atoms distinguished by analysis ofthe image intensity.

MICROSCOPY

Good news for materials research as three multi-million funding awards are announced.The funding for Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology’s Center for Materials Science andEngineering (CMSE) has been renewed by theNational Science Foundation (NSF). Now the largestof the 29 centers supported by the MaterialsResearch Science and Engineering Centersprogram, the CMSE will receive $22.2 million overthe next six years. The center brings together 40staff from six different departments under thedirection of Michael F. Rubner. “We conductinterdisciplinary research in materials science andengineering, but we also run shared experimentalfacilities that are available to people from aroundMIT,” he explains. The funding will allow the centerto continue five interdisciplinary research projectsthat include one on microphotonic materials andstructures and another developing next-generationbatteries.Purdue University unveils two new centers, whichwill form part of the Birck Nanotechnology Center

scheduled to open in 2005. $10.5 million over fiveyears from the NSF will support a collaborationbetween the universities of Purdue, Illinois, Florida,Morgan State, Northwestern, Stanford, and Texas,El Paso, to create the Network for ComputationalNanotechnology. The center will develop and usesimulations to design materials and devices for arange of applications from medical diagnostics tohomeland security. Researchers will work closelywith a second new center at Purdue funded byNASA to develop next generation supercomputersfor spacecraft. The NASA Institute forNanoelectronics and Computing is another jointeffort between Purdue, Cornell, Yale, Florida,Northwestern, and the University of California atSan Diego. With $15 million from NASA and $2 million from other sources over the next fiveyears, the center will “focus on improving theelectronics for NASA space missions, which requirelots of computation, sensing, data collection,storage and communication,” says the institute’sdirector Supriyo Datta.

Centers of excellenceFUNDING

Stanford University has established a

nanocharacterization facility in

collaboration with FEI Company. The

shared research facilities are part of

the University’s Advanced Materials

Initiative and will house a DualBeam™

focused ion beam scanning electron

microscope (SEM), owned by Stanford,

and one of FEI’s Sirion™ SEMs, to

which researchers will have access.

“The idea of Stanford’s

Nanocharacterization Facility has gone

from dream to reality as a result of

this collaboration,” says director of the

new facility Robert Sinclair. “The quality

of imaging we can obtain on these

systems is one or two orders of

magnitude better than what our users

could see on the previous instruments

we had available.”

Vahe Sarkissian, president, CEO, and

chairman of FEI, hopes Stanford will

“push this equipment to its limits”. “In

research environments such as these,

we can really stretch the capabilities

of these instruments and jointly define

roadmaps for future systems to keep

pace with the challenging needs of

nanotechnology development.”

Dream facilityCHARACTERIZATION

A collaboration between UK university

UMIST and Thermo VG Semicon has

resulted in a new facility for the

Department of Electrical Engineering

and Electronics to advance state-of-

the-art semiconductor materials and

devices for DVDs, CD-ROMs,

mobile/wireless communications, and

high-speed optical communications.

“We have got to remain leading edge,”

explains David Williams of Thermo

Electron. “We have a long history of

collaboration with universities and we

think it is a very critical part of our

R&D program all around the world.”

Leading edgecollaborationELECTRONICS