An investment of €33 million has created one of the most advanced nanotechnology research laboratories in the State, writes Dick Ahlstrom
Size definitely matters when it comes to electronic circuits. Small is good but tiny is best and the tinier the better. A new lab at Trinity College Dublin has opened, with five separate research teams exploring the "nanoworld" where minute circuits are measured in atoms.
The Tánaiste, Mary Harney officially opened the SFI (Science Foundation Ireland) Trinity Nanoscience Laboratory earlier this month. It involves a total five year investment of €33 million including an initial €3.2 million worth of some of the world's most advanced nanotechnology research equipment.
Nanoscience involves research on objects measured in nanometres, a nanometre being one billionth of a metre. Explained another way a nanometre is one ten thousandth of the thickness of a human hair.
The lab will carry out research in nanoscience, drawing on disciplines including physics, chemistry, biology and materials science, explains Prof Michael Coey, one of five SFI Principal Investigators who will lead teams in the new Centre. There are currently 54 people employed in the Centre from 19 different countries with about 40 per cent of them Irish, says Coey.
The programme involves a competitive, international peer review process to select excellent researchers, each of whom controls a five year budget worth €5 million.
Of the five Principle Investigators at the centre, two were based at Trinity, Prof Coey and Prof Igor Shvets. Prof John Pethica came from Oxford, and Prof Suzi Jarvis is from Japan, where she led a national lab research group. The fifth was from the University of North Carolina, Prof John Boland.
While the Principle Investigator awards were given to individuals, because these five at Trinity were linked by a single research impetus it made sense to group them together. "Each of us was independently assessed," explains Coey.
"We have these five individually conceived projects but the five Principle Investigators are meeting all of the time. This is really going to create a powerful synergy." Pethica agrees with this view. "You also get efficiency gains, especially when we could buy more by sharing some equipment."
The key to success depends on having the right tools for the job and a full 40 per cent of the total investment will go into equipment and facilities at the Centre. Some of the equipment exists nowhere else in Ireland and in certain cases there are no more than a handful of similar devices anywhere in the world. "Some of us were actually involved in inventing these things," adds Pethica.
One device is a powerful scanning tunnelling microscope, used to manipulate individual atoms and image them in situ.
Another is a device that uses twin beams, one a stream of electrons for imaging a surface, the other an ion beam for cutting and sculpting a surface. It can produce objects as small as 30 atoms across.
Other devices can produce ultrathin films no more than a few nanometres thick and there is an "atomic force microscope" used for examining biological systems. It can look at the interaction between, for example, a cell protein and the water molecules that surround it.
Coey's group will create a new nanoscale form of electronics based on the spin of electrons.
This promises new types of electronic circuits measured in atoms, shrinking computers down to the head of a pin.
Prof Shvets leads the "nanomag" research group which will study magnetic oxide films.
It will focus on the atomic surface of the films to understand their properties and how electrons on the surface might be used in spin electronics.
Prof Jarvis leads a group looking at the interface between nanoscience and biology, and should open up new discoveries in bio-compatible materials and drug delivery.
Prof Boland's team will take a fresh look at the silicon technology that forms the basis of modern computer chips.
It involves nanoscale examination of silicon surfaces and the development of completely new types of nano devices that can be grown rather than assembled.
Prof Pethica heads the nanomechanics group that will study the basic forces acting on nanometre scale. The team will measure the forces between atomic and nanometre elements and study new nanofabrication processes.