Come springtime, researchers, professors, and students in Carleton’s chemistry and engineering departments will have access to a new research lab currently under construction in Minto Centre.
The Facility for Nanoscience, Surfaces and Sensor Interfaces (FANSSI), located on the fifth floor of Minto, will be used for research in the deposition of extremely thin films of metals, oxides, and nitrates onto different materials.
The research performed at FANSSI is funded by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, which invested $1.9 million into energy and health research at Carleton in September 2011.
The facility is directed by Sean Barry, associate chemistry professor at Carleton, photonics professor Jacques Albert, and associate professor Steven McGarry from the department of electronics.
Construction on the lab began November 2013 and is expected to be complete some time this spring, said Mike Graham, assistant director of facilities engineering and construction at Carleton.
Similar research is currently being done in a lab at the Steacie Building, but the space is often busy, said Peter Gordon, a post-graduate researcher with Barry’s team.
“The lab at the Steacie Building is also a graduate and undergraduate lab so there’s a lot of stuff going on, it’s a little bit messy, it’s a little bit dirty,” he said.
FANSSI will be a cleaner, more controlled environment and will be better suited for collaboration with outside companies, Gordon said.
Carleton’s research team plans to open FANSSI to outside companies that don’t have their own research space. Companies will be able to perform small-scale research projects at the facility with the assistance of Barry’s team.
Larger, more versatile commercial versions of the tools being used at the Steacie Building will also be housed in the new facility.
The tools are used to create nanometres-thick coatings for materials that are “usually used for electronics, solar applications, or microelectronics in general.”
The renovation’s $250,000 price tag covers the cost of construction but not the cost of equipment for the lab, according to Graham.
