MUR International Project NFFA (Nanoscience Foundries and Fine Analysis)
Nanoscience Foundries & Fine Analysis (NFFA) - Trieste is an open access infrastructure to perform experiments in nanoscience involving growth, characterization and advanced spectroscopies at synchrotron radiation and free electron laser sources.
NFFA-Trieste portal (www.trieste.nffa.eu) has been operational for national and international users since 2015.
NFFA-Trieste is the first research facility for nanoscience offering open access to external users by integrating nanofoundries (synthesis and manipulation of nanostructures) with analytical large scale facilities.
The project, therefore, offers advanced off-line tools for sample growth (PLD, MBE, PVD) and for characterization (STM, XPS, MOKE, SEM, XRD) of nanosystems, in combination with spectroscopic techniques at Elettra (ARPES, Spin-ARPES, XPS, XMCD, XAS, Ambient-pressure XAS). APE beamline
Moreover, from 2018 users may apply for the use of SPRINT laboratory, where pulsed laser sources are used to perform time-resolved valence band photoemission spectroscopy and spin polarization polarimetry, a facility shared with theT-ReX Laboratory of Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste, located at FERMI.
The Open Access is regulated by a proposal system and international peer-review, that considers specific projects that need integrated access to different techniques in the nanoscience research. There are no deadlines and proposals are continuously accepted and evaluated.
NFFA-Trieste is an International Project funded by MIUR and operated in close synergy by Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste and CNR-IOM (Istituto Officina dei Materiali, Trieste), with spokerperson Prof. Giorgio Rossi (University of Milan and CNR-IOM).
Other organizations and stakeholders involved
NFFA-Trieste represents the Design Study of NFFA-Europe (www.nffa.eu), a H2020 Integration project coordinated by CNR-IOM providing transnational open access to a distributed nanoscience infrastructure (more than 20 partners), where many nanofoundries are co-located with Analytical Large Scale facilities, as NFFA-Trieste.
Strategic objectives
- To offer open access to advanced infrastructures, clean rooms, atomic resolution probes and beamlines both for fundamental science purposes as well as for the development of applied research projects.
- To integrate the synthesis and growth capabilities of complex materials (in situ) with characterization and spectroscopy.
- To implement an advanced data and metadata management system for nanosciences, and to develop protocols and data management with FAIR characteristics, and in EOSC perspective.
