The National Submicron Facility

A field such as microstructure science, which draws its practitioners and their techniques from a wide range of disciplines, needs a national center where research workers from different backgrounds can come together, where appropriate experimental equipment can be concentrated, and which can serve as an information resource for the nation’s research community. Without such a center for microstructure research, a very noticeable gap was opening up between university research on the one hand and the accomplishments of industrial laboratories on the other, due mainly to the expensive equipment and the interdisciplinary nature of microstructure science and engineering. The National Science Foundation, sensing the widening gap, established a national facility for university research in this field in 1977. Currently housed in temporary quarters at Cornell University, in Ithaca N.Y., the facility is due to move its operations to a new laboratory on the Cornell campus in 1981. The purpose of this “focussed” facility is to stimulate university research by providing an equipment base for visiting scientists from other universities, as well as for resident Cornell scientists, who could not otherwise afford programs in microstructure research.