The University of York is installing four new pieces of high-end equipment—including a thin-film growth system, an electron microscope, a molecular characterisation tool, and a high-performance mass spectrometer—to create and analyse next-generation materials. These facilities address a practical bottleneck: advanced materials underpin everything from faster electronics to medical sensors, but developing them requires specialised instruments that are expensive and quickly become outdated. Without regular investment, university labs fall behind, slowing the entire pipeline from discovery to application. If successful, the refreshed equipment will allow researchers to build and test new materials—such as biologically-inspired sensors or ultra-thin films for data storage—that could improve hard drives, diagnostic devices, or energy-efficient electronics. Industrial partners like JEOL and Seagate will use the results to refine commercial products. The project is primarily about enabling fundamental materials science, but the same kind of infrastructure investment has historically led to unexpected applications in communications, manufacturing, and healthcare.
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Internationally leading science requires experimental facilities with state-of-the-art equipment. Advanced materials are a key driver of technological innovation, with widespread benefits for both science and society. In this project, we aim to refresh four facilities with impact across Physics, Electronics, Chemistry and Biology in order to enhance our capability in this area, with maximum usage across the University of York and beyond. We will install new physical and chemical characterisation systems to support a range of challenging new applications, for example, state of the art thin film growth capabilities, and biologically-inspired sensor technologies. Using these new facilities, we will achieve four major milestones for next-generation materials development: 1. Refresh thin film growth capabilities in order to develop next generation materials. 2. Renew electron microscopy facilities to facilitate high spatial resolution mapping of next generation materials. 3. Extend and refresh a capability in molecular characterisation to underpin multidisciplinary activities spanning the physical and life sciences. 4. Refresh, complement and extend the capabilities of the York Centre of Excellence in Mass Spectrometry (CoEMS) by addition of a high-performance Orbitrap Fusion instrument. Through this proposal we will invest in state-of-the-art equipment that will enable us to create, analyse and understand new materials and use them to develop innovative interdisciplinary technologies within the university and with outside collaborators, including key industrial partners such as JEOL and Seagate.
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