Operations and Maintenance Support for Facilities for Materials Characterization

请拨资金支助用于材料科学和工程的六套主要仪器的操作和维修。这些仪器包括固态核磁共振光谱仪、透射电子显微镜、电子探针分析仪器、物理性质测量系统、x射线光电子能谱仪、扫描电子显微镜和聚焦离子束仪器。所有这些工具都是海事地区独有的，所有这些工具都被整个地区的学术和工业客户大量使用，在某些情况下也被国际上使用。支持的项目包括非常多样化的材料研究人员，包括许多加拿大研究主席和工业研究主席，其项目涵盖了材料的非常基本的问题，高度应用和具有经济意义的材料开发。一些主题包括高性能光学玻璃；蓄热材料；自旋电子应用的磁性薄膜；高强度材料和涂料；纳米颗粒;以及矿物的形成和地质过程。所讨论的所有文书也大量用于培训；每一个都有一个培训计划，并鼓励研究人员，特别是学生成为精通仪器操作和熟练用户。虽然每个仪器都有专门的技术人员监督日常操作，但这些工作人员的资金主要来自部分大学支助和用户费用。这种支助与总的业务费用之间存在差距，因此，本提案中所要求的支助的需求是至关重要的。有了这种支持，这只占这些仪器更换成本的一小部分，这套仪器将在未来几年内功能齐全，效率高。此外，使用这些仪器的国际知名研究人员将能够继续他们的突破性研究，至少同样重要的是，海事地区的下一代材料研究人员将接受最先进仪器的培训。

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.