EPSRC Core Capital University of York

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The University of York proposes to purchase the following items of core capital equipment:A Thermogravimetric analysis gas chromatograph mass spectrometer (TGA-GCMS). This equipment will support collaborative research across the Departments of Environment & Geography and Chemistry. The purchase of this equipment will not only provide a much needed replacement of ageing TGA equipment currently housed in our Chemistry department, but more importantly, would enhance the research capability of that equipment for wider use across the university. There is a critical need for this type of analysis in a number of multi-disciplinary collaborative projects with application in areas such as sustainable polymers, catalysis, nanoparticles, carbon capture, carbon sequestration.Energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy is a powerful electron microscopy technique to obtain chemical information/properties of both organic and inorganic materials as well as devices with spatial resolution down to nm scale. Hence, it is an indispensable and most versatile tool for fast and reliable analysis in bulk and nano-materials research. Current advances in X-ray solid state detectors (SDD) in combination with fast data processing electronics and software, can deliver unparalleled speed and sensitivity in chemical elemental analysis. This proposal requests funds for dual large area solid-state detectors for our JEOL7800F Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) housed in our York-JEOL Nanocentre. The large SDD sensors will allow >20 times more data to be collected in the same time with no loss of accuracy. The ability of SEM to raster the electron beam from millimetre to nanometre-sized areas will allow chemical mapping of larger areas, have better statistics in each data point, collect data much faster, and investigate the smallest nano-structures.Ultra-high-memory computational node (1.5 TB RAM | Intel Xeon Platinum (96 physical cores)) for York's multi-user advanced research computing cluster (VIKING) underpinned by additional Linux servers. Ultra-high memory compute nodes are emerging as a game-changer in all branches of science because they allow unprecedented parallel computations and data analysis with maximum intensity. However, access to ultra-high-RAM nodes at UK national facilities is virtually nonexistent (e.g. the strongest nodes in ARCHER, UK's top national supercomputing service, are limited to 128 GB RAM). The requested core equipment aims at expanding and complementing VIKING (University of York's visionary HPC research computing facility) with an additional "giant node" (1.5 TB RAM) to help establish a world-class facility that will benefit York's base of computational research. The ultra-high-RAM facility will benefit a wide range of Physical Sciences (specifically quantum science, fusion and materials research), Electronics, Computer Science and Biology research at the University of York. The servers will act as a training ground for new users adapting their research towards computational studies, to learn Linux and programming and provide an entry to use of Viking, regional and national resources such as Bede and Archer2. The servers will provide a flexible compute resource, to support researchers whose emphasis is shifting from laboratory to computational research