Super-Abundant Size-Selected Cluster Technology for Nanoscale Design of Functional Materials

Size-selected clusters are collections of atoms, from 2 to ~20,000, with diameters between a few Angstroms and ~20nm. The remarkable physical and chemical properties of clusters depend on the number of atoms they contain and differ dramatically from the corresponding individual atoms and bulk solids. They have numerous potential applications, as catalytic particles, as components of novel electronic and photonic materials and sensors, as binding sites for protein molecules in biochips, as environmental reference materials, etc etc.

The best current cluster beam sources are limited to the production of ~1microgram of clusters per day. I propose a method to increase that rate by 10 orders of magnitude, transforming the field.

The enormous increase in the availability of size-selected clusters produced by the "Matrix-Assembly Cluster Source" (MACS) is expected to open up completely new horizons across a wide range of disciplines - from physics and chemistry to biology and engineering - and applications, creating significant opportunities for radical advances in both basic science and advanced technology, notably in the nanoscale design of functional materials.

Since the principle of the proposed cluster beam technology is completely original and the increase in the rate of production of size-selected clusters envisaged is as large as 5-10 orders of magnitude, the project offers very considerable potential for eventual economic impact.

It would probably not be possible to given a comprehensive list of the potential opportunities arising but in the Pathways to Impact document we seek to illustrate the range of possibilities and the diversity of sectors that could be impacted by the capacity to generate super-abundant quantities of precisely defined nanostructures in the size regime 1-10nm. This breadth of opportunities also provides a menu for the proposed demonstration experiments described in the main body of the proposal (Case for Support).

To consider just a few examples, the new level of cluster flux in the lab setting envisaged in this proposal (i.e. an increase over the current state of the art by up to 8 orders of magnitude) will enable facile preparation of biochip surfaces, optical films and precision catalysts for R&D at the test-tube or flask scale. The production rates ultimately available in an industrial setting (i.e. an increase of 10 orders of magnitude over current levels) should further enable viable manufacture of industrial quantities of colloids, pharmaceutical catalysts and coatings as well as novel electronic materials (e.g. variable capacitors).

The proposal includes provision for technical demonstrations and meetings with potential UK exploitation partners as well as a half-day event promoting the technology to UK companies, probably in year 4 or thereabouts.

These technical opportunities go along with the multiplicity of new, fundamental cluster studies that we expect to be enabled by this breakthrough technology.