The Puerto Rico Research Infrastructure Improvement award seeks support to bring together the ideas, tools, and people needed to lay the foundation for a strong Institute for Functional Nanomaterials (IFN) in Puerto Rico. Building on the success of the Nanotechnology Thrust of the RII Phase V project (2003-2007), the IFN will advance EPSCoR goals by strengthening academic research overall and making the Jurisdiction internationally competitive in this key field. By fostering innovation in Nanoscience, the IFN will stimulate economic development in Puerto Rico. The IFN brings together 26 active research nano scientists and engineers, from two graduate and two undergraduate campuses in Puerto Rico, into three thematically coherent research clusters: Functional Dispersed Nanostructures, Functional Nanostructures at the Interface, and Multifunctional Nanostructures. These clusters will evolve into active multi-campus interdisciplinary research groups that share infrastructure, develop new group research projects and proposals, and incorporate 15 new research faculty members to enhance the research capacities. Major equipment acquisition will contribute to their research competitiveness. The following instruments were strategically identified by the nano researchers in terms of the enabling capabilities: High-Resolution Small Angle XRD System (HR-SAXRD), Scanning Auger Nanoprobe (SAN), High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscope (HR-TEM), and Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FE-SEM).
The development of the IFN will increase the amount and quality of cutting-edge research and intellectual property. The proposal would establish collaborations with five nationally recognized strategic partners; Argonne National Laboratory, University of Massachusetts, Purdue University, NASA Glenn Research Center, and Northwestern University. This collaboration will strongly complement the resources and scientific capabilities of the three clusters and allow the IFN to bootstrap and accelerate the Jurisdiction's capacity to reach national levels of competitiveness in Nanoscience and technology. Further, the IFN will develop the capacity to commercialize the resulting technologies by networking with the NanoBusiness Alliance to reach national markets, and through the Jurisdiction's NSF Partnership for Innovation (PFI) project to use the incubator of the most important technology corridor in Puerto Rico, INTECO, in order to promote the creation of nanotechnology-oriented businesses.
By educating students in the Nation's largest Hispanic Serving Institution, Puerto Rico will make a significant contribution to the diversity of the national workforce in Nanoscience through the development of educational materials and courses centered in this discipline.. The IFN activities will reach a population of students that is more than 90 percent Hispanic at the undergraduate level and over 50 percent at the graduate level and provide them with the opportunity to pursue careers in Nanoscience and Technology.
