Operations and Maintenance Support for Facilities for Materials Characterization

要求提供资金，以支持用于材料科学和工程的六个主要仪器包的操作和维护。这些包括固态NMR光谱仪，透射电子显微镜，电子探针分析仪器，物理性能测量系统，X射线光电子光谱仪，扫描电子显微镜和聚焦离子束仪器。所有这些仪器都是海事地区所独有的，所有这些仪器都被整个地区的学术和工业客户广泛使用，在某些情况下也被国际客户广泛使用。支持的计划包括一组非常多样化的材料研究人员，包括一些加拿大研究主席和工业研究主席，其计划涵盖材料中非常基本的问题，以高度应用和经济上重要的材料开发。一些主题包括高性能光学玻璃;热存储材料;自旋电子应用的磁性薄膜;高强度材料和涂层;纳米颗粒;矿物形成和地质过程。所有讨论的仪器也大量用于培训;每个都有一个培训计划，鼓励研究人员，特别是学生，精通仪器操作，成为熟练的用户。虽然每台仪器都有一名专门的技术人员监督日常运作，但这些工作人员的经费主要来自部分大学支助和用户费。这种支助与总体业务费用之间存在差距，因此，本提案中所要求的支助至关重要。有了这一支持，这只是这些仪器更换费用的一小部分，这套仪器将在未来几年内充分发挥作用和效率。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开创性研究，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.