Operations and Maintenance Support for the Centre for Crystal Growth

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The synthesis of new materials and their growth as single crystals is a sophisticated enabling capability for much of materials physics and chemistry. Advances in understanding new materials that are ultimately made through the advanced characterization of the materials, and their theoretical understanding, begins with the synthesis and crystal growth of new materials. In many instances, it is this initial step that limits our progress in the physics and chemistry of materials. This field is among the largest in contemporary science, including both fundamental and applied interests. Materials synthesis and crystal growth includes all components of synthesis and crystal growth of materials, including the capability to sufficiently characterize the resulting materials such that their composition, stoichiometry and crystalline nature are quantified and understood. In the case of single crystals it also includes the capability to cut and orient the crystals into particular geometries appropriate to the experiments that the end users intend. The Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research at McMaster University (BIMR) is home to the Centre for Crystal Growth (CCG), which constitutes the largest and most extensive set of materials preparation and crystal growth infrastructure in Canada - an investment of over $7M in forefront technical infrastructure devoted to this purpose. It is centred on three of the five floating zone image furnaces in Canada that have been responsible for 90% of the growth of large single crystals of transition metal oxides. New magnetic and superconducting materials are often such oxides, and the CCG hosts much of Canada's technical infrastructure and expertise in this area. The CCG employs four technical staff members who allow these facilities to be optimally exploited by a large cohort of excellent materials physicists and chemists from across Canada. The forefront research infrastructure within the CCG is not viable without their expertise and dedication. In particular the technical staff allow for sophisticated training of the HQP associated with the academic users, and maintain the cutting edge infrastructure in an appropriate state of readiness. The CCG also hosts the "BIMR Summer School on Modern Methods of Crystal Growth" which is Canada's only such specialized school related to these these important techniques and skills. The proposal seeks to provide partial funding for the four CCG technical staff members and to provide maintenance support on associated infrastructure. This NSERC support is crucial to the CCG's mission of providing unique and sophisticated technical capabilities related to materials preparation and crystal growth for a national user base. In turn, the CCG underlies important research programs in Canadian materials physics and chemistry laboratories that will discover, understand and exploit materials enabling future new technologies.