Operations and Maintenance Support for Facilities for Materials Characterization

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Funds are requested to support the operation and maintenance of six major instrument packages used for materials science and engineering. These include solid state NMR spectrometers, a transmission electron microscope, an electron microprobe analysis instrument, a physical properties measurement system, an x-ray photoelectron spectrometer, and a scanning electron microscopy and focused ion beam instrument. All these instruments are unique to the Maritime region, and all are heavily used by a mix of academic and industrial clients throughout the region and in some cases internationally as well. The programs supported include a remarkably diverse set of materials researchers, including a number of Canada Research Chairs and Industrial Research Chairs, with programs spanning very fundamental issues in materials to highly applied and economically significant materials development. Some topics include high performance optical glass; heat storage materials; magnetic films for spintronic applications; high strength materials and coatings; nanoparticles; and mineral formation and geological processes. All the instruments discussed are also used substantially for training; each has a training program, and researchers, especially students, are encouraged to become versed in instrument operation and to become proficient users. While each instrument has a dedicated technical staff member overseeing daily operations, these staff are funded primarily by a combination of partial university support and user fees. There is a gap between this support and the overall operations costs, thus the need for the requested support in this proposal is critical. With this support, which represents only a small fraction of the replacement cost of these instruments, this set of instrumentation will be fully functional and efficient for future years. Moreover, the internationally known group of researchers using these instruments will be able to continue their ground-breaking studies, and at least as important, the next generation of materials researchers in the Maritime region will be trained on state-of-the-art instrumentation.