Development of management structure and format of user access for NFFA-RI Centres. Design of NFFA Data Repository and access criteria. Intellectual property issues.

The NFFA Design Study is the joint effort of five European research institutions to study the feasibility of a new kind of user infrastructure for nanoscience based on a cluster of Foundry Centres strongly linked to Large Scale Facilities. Nanoscience has proven to be of enormous potential in the development of new materials and functional systems, tailored at the nanoscale, which will have significant impacts on many aspects of economy, health and society. The worldwide awareness of this potential has prompted various supporting schemes and research infrastructures dedicated to nanoscience and for nanotechnology in many industrialised and developing countries, all aiming at bridging the gap between fundamental research and industry-oriented research. Europe has a great potential in impacting on nanoscience and nanotechnology thanks to its remarkable infrastructural heritage of Large Scale facilities. The overall goal of NFFA is to define the most appropriate European Distributed Research Infrastructure 1 for supporting advanced nanoscience projects that do require state of the art modelling and simulation methods, material synthesis, nanofabrication, new advanced metrology and that will take full advantage of the radiation sources employed for fine analysis as well as for material and system synthesis. NFFA aims to create 3 to 6 new Centres for nanoscience all connected with analytical Large Scale Facilities (LSFs) covering the needs of nanostructural determination, electronic and magnetic characterization, X-radiation lithography and photon assisted synthesis, dynamical studies with ultrashort X-ray pulses.

Development of management structure and format of user access for NFFA-RI Centres. Design of NFFA Data Repository and access criteria. Intellectual property issues.