16 LaboratoryDesign|MARCH|APRIL 2016
NEWPROJECTS
Sydney Nanoscience Hub,
University of Sydney, Australia
;Cost: $150 million
;Size: 11,600 sq. meters
;Team: Professor Thomas Maschmeyer,
AINST Director; Professor Simon Ringer, Director, Sydney Nanoscience Hub
and Research and Prototype Foundry;
Professor Zdenka Kuncic, Director,
Community and Research
;Description: The Sydney Nanoscience
Hub, headquarters of the Australian Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology (AINST), will officially launch on April
20, 2016. The new facility is among the
most advanced laboratories for advanced
measurement and experimental device
demonstration globally built for this pur-
pose and joins just a handful of facilities
at some of the most prominent univer-
sities globally. Available for public use
is a one-stop-shop prototyping facility
and cleanroom (including core facili-
ties in nanofabrication, nanometrology,
and nanoscale imaging). These facilities
will be complemented by an advanced
electron microscope in one of the most
electromagnetically and mechanically
stable laboratory environments in the
world. The facility is a world-first, offer-
ing combinations of laboratories with
unprecedented technical performance for
nanoscale research, meshed with teaching
facilities that bring students into the heart
of the action. The research laboratories
span a variety of specifications, but the
“precision metrology” laboratories have
combinations of technical performance
that are unmatched in comparable
facilities globally. These include extreme-
ly tight electromagnetic interference
specifications (<10n T pp fluctuations);
vibration (better than VCG criterion —
the tightest spec developed — a particular
metric for floor vibration over a frequen-
cy band); air temperature stability (temp
stable to within +/- 0.1 C); air pressure
(fluctuations <~ 5-7 Pa); humidity (stable
+/- 5 percent). The Institute is also about
to commence the procurement process
for a new aberration corrected transmis-
sion electron microscope. This micro-
scope will allow researchers to “see” and
measure atoms and the forces that bind
them together.
;Completion Date: 2015
;Contact: Professor Simon Ringer,
simon.ringer@sydney.edu.au
Image: University of Sydney
Image: University of Sydney
