NFFA-DI: A full-spectrum Research Infrastructure for nanoscience and nanotechnology, aimed at increasing the competitiveness of the southern Italian system in science and technology.
NFFA-DI (Nanoscience Foundries and Fine Analysis Digital Infrastructure) is a Research Infrastructure (RI), funded by the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), organised under the leadership of the National Research Council (CNR) and widely distributed on the Italian territory. It is designed to allow its users pursuing major breakthroughs in nanoscience and nanotechnology by providing them with a full spectrum of complementary opportunities in the fields of materials science and device fabrication. In particular, it aims at bridging at a European level the existing gap between fundamental research on quantum matter and functional micro- systems for the digital transformation.
The activity of NFFA-DI started on Jan. 1st, 2023. The different local nodes of this distributed RI are presently upgrading their laboratories and hiring new personnel according to the original plan, in order to set up an overall portfolio of state-of-the-art experimental and computational resource that will all be available through a single-entry point.
NFFA-DI specifically aims at increasing the competitiveness of southern Italian system in science and technology, by concentrating major investments in Naples, Lecce and Catania. This will make state-of-the-art equipment locally accessible to southern-Italian scientists from both the private and public research systems. Full operativity of the RI will be achieved by year 2025.
A short description of the most important experimental upgrades currently being set up in CNR-SPIN (Naples), CNR-NANOTEC (Lecce) and CNR-IMM (Catania) are reported below.
CNR-SPIN (Naples) will upgrade the so-called “MODA” facility (Modular facility for Oxide Deposition and Analysis). MODA is a multicluster system allowing for RHEED-assisted pulsed laser deposition (PLD) with real-time plume analysis, XPS/UPS, SPA-LEED and AFM/STM. MODA will become a part of a larger interconnected UHV cluster dedicated to the growth and in-situ characterization of epitaxial thin films and multilayers, also including a new large-area PLD, a sputtering system for metals, a chamber for the growth of organic films, a UHV suitcase for samples transfer, and a glove box.
CNR-NANOTEC (Lecce) will upgrade its correlative microscopy facility, intended to facilitate the pursuit of research in emerging, interdisciplinary, and rapidly growing fields such as thin-film solar cells, batteries, photocatalyst for solar fuel production and electronic/optoelectronic/nanophotonic systems. CNR-NANOTEC aims to increase the TRL of its correlative microscopy platform by including novel state-of-the-art instruments and by promoting strong collaboration and cooperation with the technological nodes of the present infrastructure in order to extend the technology to a large plethora of materials and device optimization areas.
CNR-IMM (Catania) will pursue the upgrade of its 3D elemental profiling laboratory facility, to deliver high precision elemental and isotopic space distribution analyses with increased ease-of-use and productivity. The 3D profiling equipment is based on mass spectrometry. It allows for atomistic resolution and will be optimized for glass, metal, ceramics, IV-group- III-V-groups-, and II-VI-groups-based devices. The upgrade consists in the procurement of additional instrumentation with 3D features, in adapting the data acquisition cards of both the existing and the new tools, to allow their networking within NFFA-DI.
Utilities
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