NFFA Survey on the Potential of an European Distributed Research Infrastructure for Nanoscience (NFFA)

The European Commission has awarded a feasibility study for setting up a cluster of distributed nanoscience foundries co-located at the large scale facilities in EU member states.

As a part of the feasibility study, a wide consultation in nanoscience research community and the user community of large scale facility is necessary. It is well known that large scale facilities, such as synchrotron radiation source, neutron scattering source and high power laser, are the national and international focus points of basic and applied scientific research. There are intimate links between nanosciences, such as nanomaterials and nanobiology, and large scale scientific research facilities. By co-locating nanoscience foundries with the large scale facilities, an integrated research environment can be created. Such an environment already exits in the US where 5 nanoscience centres have been set up in 5 different US national facilities (see http://www.science.doe.gov/News_Information/News_Room/2006/nano/index.htm). Europe has been lagging behind and started to seriously look into such a strategic development.

The present survey is to investigate the current and future needs of European nanoscience research and to gauge the requirements of setting up such a cluster of distributed nanoscience foundries. Scientists and nanotechnology developers who need an access to state of the art instrumentation and methods for designing, synthesizing, nanofabricating, characterizing matter with atomic precision and performing experiments also using the fine analysis methods based on X-rays, neutrons or fast pulsed radiation are all welcome to participate the survey. This includes current users as well as supporting scientists of large scale facilities engaged in nanoscience research. Your response will help to shape the European landscape of nanoscience research and nanotechnology development, and ultimately bring benefit to your own research.

The survey takes no more than 5 minutes. The survey web is completely secure and all data transmission is encrypted. The e-mail address you provide in the survey will ONLY be used in case that the participant of the survey has interest in further information of NFFA and only for this purpose.