MRI: Acquisition of a Small-Angle Scattering Instrument for Nanoscale Materials Research and Education

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0923260GreenU. Virginia"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."Technical Summary: Our objective is to acquire a small-angle x-ray scattering instrument (SAXS) to establish the X-Ray Scattering Facility for Quantum and Nanoscale Research and Education. The proposed user facility is designed to serve the robust and growing NanoScience community at the University of Virginia (UVa). Existing research thrusts are interdisciplinary, connecting the Schools of Engineering, Arts and Sciences, and Medicine in target areas including Nanomedicine, Nanoelectronics, Energy, and the Environment. The state-of-the-art facility will be established through the addition of a SAXS instrument. SAXS is a powerful technique for characterizing the size, shape, and internal structure of materials from length scales spanning 1 to 115 nm, providing critical information about the structure of materials as diverse as crystalline and amorphous nanoparticles to functional proteins. The core faculty will use the SAXS to develop new devices and processes with broad societal impact such as new quantum computing materials for smaller integrated circuits; biodegradable polymer-metal block copolymers for improved drug delivery; and amorphous/nanostructured metallic alloys for high efficiency energy conversion. The proposed instrument will be housed in Wilsdorf Hall, a $68M multidisciplinary research building completed in 2006. In conclusion, the SAXS instrument will support significant research programs, the instrument will be highly integrated into undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral studies, and will be used to expose underrepresented minorities to cutting-edge research as well as recruit them into UVa?s graduate science and engineering programs.Layperson Summary: The use of x-rays impacts countless lives across multiple disciplines, most notably in medicine. In addition to familiar radiological applications, x-rays also provide critical information regarding the structure of materials over a range of sizes depending on instrument configuration. Hence, our objective is to acquire a small-angle x-ray scattering instrument (SAXS) to establish the X-Ray Scattering Facility for Quantum and Nanoscale Research and Education. The proposed user facility is designed to serve the robust and growing nanotech communities at the University of Virginia (UVa), surrounding universities, and our commercial partners. Existing research thrusts are interdisciplinary, connecting the Schools of Engineering, Arts and Sciences, and Medicine in target areas including medicine, electronics, energy, and the environment. The high-tech facility will be established by adding the SAXS apparatus to existing instrumentation, all of which will be overseen by experts in x-ray analysis. Overall, SAXS represents a state-of-the-art technique to determine the size, shape, and architecture of materials with dimensions spanning 1 nm to 100 nm. Thus, SAXS can provide important information about the structure of materials as diverse as crystalline and amorphous nanoparticles used in the mechanical reinforcement of composites as well as functional proteins involved in biological processes such as vision. To this end, the core faculty will use SAXS to develop new devices and processes with broad societal impact such as novel electronics for next generation computers; biodegradable polymers for improved drug delivery; lightweight carbon nanotube composites for ultra-responsive sensors; and nanostructured metals for high efficiency energy conversion. The proposed instrument will be housed in Wilsdorf Hall, a new $68M nanotechnology research building recently completed in 2006. In conclusion, the SAXS instrument will support significant research programs, the instrument will be highly integrated into undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral studies, and will be used to expose underrepresented minorities to cutting-edge research as well as recruit them into UVa?s graduate science and engineering programs.