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June
14, 2002
Energy
Secretary Abraham Announces Center for Nanosciences
at Brookhaven Lab
UPTON, N.Y. - Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham
today announced that the department plans to proceed
with a center for nanoscale science research at
its Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island.
Secretary Abraham made the announcement at a meeting
with laboratory employees following a tour of
Brookhaven laboratory facilities. He was accompanied
by Interim Lab Director Peter Paul and Congressman
Felix Grucci, a member of the House Committee
on Science and a leader on science issues.
"Nanoscience holds the potential for a veritable
second industrial revolution," Secretary
Abraham said. "Possible applications range
from microscopic chemical factories to electronic
devices that first assemble themselves and then
repair themselves!"
The new center at Brookhaven will include a laboratory
and office building with clean rooms, nanofabrication
facilities and scientific equipment. The center
will house an expanded electron microscopy facility,
ultrafast laser sources and powerful probes to
directly image atomic and molecular structure.
The center will be a user facility open to researchers
outside the lab on a peer-review basis.
Nanomaterials -- typically on the scale of billionths
of a meter or 1,000 times smaller than a human
hair -- offer different chemical and physical
properties than bulk materials, and have the potential
to form the basis of new technologies. The Brookhaven
center's focus is to achieve a basic understanding
of how these materials respond when in nanoscale
form. Understanding these properties may allow
researchers to design materials with properties
tailored to specific needs such as strong, lightweight
materials, new lubricants and more efficient solar
energy cells. By building structures one atom
at a time, the materials may have enhanced mechanical,
optical, electrical or catalytic properties.
The U.S. has built outstanding facilities, mostly
owned by the Department of Energy, to characterize
and analyze materials at the nanoscale, but world-class
facilities available to the scientific community
to synthesize, process and fabricate nanoscale
materials and structures do not exist. The Brookhaven
center is one of five nanoscale science research
centers proposed by the Energy Department to fill
that need. The centers will provide researchers
with state-of-the-art capabilities to explore,
fabricate and study nanoscale materials. The centers
are part of the department's contribution to the
National Nanotechnology Initiative.
Brookhaven Lab brings three major strengths to
the advanced study of nanoscience materials. First,
the laboratory operates key facilities for studying
the properties of nanomaterials: the National
Synchrotron Light Source, the Laser-Electron Accelerator
Facility and a Transmission Electron Microscope
Facility. Second, Brookhaven's scientific staff
and facility users have had a long history of
achievement in probing structures of new materials.
Finally, Brookhaven is an integral partner of
the university community in the Northeast, where
nanoscience has emerged as a major research thrust.
The Brookhaven Nanocenter will focus on six areas:
examining changes in the electronic response of
metal oxides with nanoscale dimensions; probing
magnetic interactions in nanomaterials; studying
new ways to form nanocatalysts; understanding
electronic conduction in molecular wires; studying
the self-assembly of thin organic films; and applications
such as building nanoscale electronic devices,
ultrathin-film optical devices and advanced fuel
cell catalysts.
Today's announcement follows positive results
from a peer-review that the Energy Department
conducted of Brookhaven's proposal for a center.
The department's Office of Science will now begin
preparing the facility's conceptual design report
that will be needed to request construction funding
from Congress. The preliminary cost range for
the project is $70-85 million. Engineering design,
construction and commissioning are estimated to
take four years and could start in Fiscal Year
2004.
Secretary Abraham's Remarks at Brookhaven Lab
Media Contact:
Dolline Hatchett, 202/586-5806
Joe Davis, 202/586-4940
Number: PR-02-104
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