As material design becomes more sophisticated, ever more powerful probes are needed to complete the feedback loop between processing, structure and performance. New high resolution probes are being used within SUPA's CMMP Theme to explore semiconducting materials and devices; magnetic storage materials and associated sensors; nanoparticles for a range of applications (e.g. for magnetic storage media and for biological probes); biomolecules; quantum dots; and colloids. In many of these areas, materials and devices are engineered on an atomic scale: characterisation of structure, composition, chemistry and properties such as magnetism is required on this scale. Major multidisciplinary centres of instrumentation and expertise for such characterisation are hosted at Glasgow, Strathclyde, St Andrews and Edinburgh. Much of this activity has links with SUPA's Photonics Theme.
Research within SUPA also makes use of major international facilities, in the UK and overseas, such as neutron and muon sources. These are used, for example, to probe the magnetic and structural properties of thin-film nanomagnetic arrays derived from colloidal and other self-assembly routes.
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Transmission electron microscope at the Kelvin Nanocharacterisation Centre in Glasgow. |