Funding Success for Nanomaterials Processing Laboratory

The Nanomaterials Processing Laboratory (NPL) at the School of Electronic Engineering has been awarded close to €1 million research funding in recent months.

The NPL, which draws researchers from the Research Institute for Networks and Communications Engineering (RINCE) and the National Centre for Plasma Science and Technology (NCPST), is led by Prof. Patrick McNally. Prof. McNally was recently awarded an EU Framework Programme (FP7) STREP Grant of €225,509. The project entitled "Investigation of Si wafer damage in manufacturing processes (SIDAM)" runs from 2008 to 2010. Collaborators include CEIT (Spain), University of Freiburg (Germany), ANKA Synchrotron (Germany), Bede Scientific (UK) and the University of Durham (UK).

Prof. McNally also received a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Equipment Grant for the acquisition of a Mini Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) System in December 2007. In addition, Prof. McNally and his colleague Dr. Stephen Daniels were awarded an Enterprise Ireland (EI) Commercialisation Fund Technology Development Grant for a project entitled "Development of prototype devices for flexible white-light emitters based on copper halide technology". The project runs from December 2007 to November 2010. The value of the project is €390,000.

Importantly, these funding agencies use international experts to review grant proposals, so this success represents a strong endorsement of the NPL's research activities by their fellow researchers across the globe. In addition, funding for the commercialisation of research findings, such as that recently secured by the NPL is an important stepping stone in Ireland's move to a knowledge-based economy.