Projects News
Balance of the NFFA-Europe project at ICMAB, the largest European network for research at the nanoscale
ICMAB is one of the host institutions of the NFFA-Europe project for the synthesis and characterisation at the nanoscale across Europe, which started in 2015 and will last until the end of 2018.


Since the begining of the project, after five calls, ICMAB has participated in the following way:
- We have received 11 project proposals, for a total of 14 different users, from countries like Italy, Turkey, Greece, Switzerland or France.
- We have provided more than 40 Units of Access (1 UoA = 8 hours of equipment use)
- The installations used until now have been: scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR), atomic laser deposition (ALD), magnetometry by Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUID) and ellipsometry.
Apart from ICMAB, the National Microelectronics Center (CNM), also from CSIC, hosts NFFA-Europe users. We jointly offer a comprehensive set of top-down and bottom-up technological resources of nano relevance encompassing material growth, pattern definition and transfer, ancillary techniques for micro-nanodevice fabrication, and structural and functional characterization. Nanomaterials and nanofabrication are our core business and we have already established a collaboration with nearby synchrotron ALBA.
In the UAB Campus, five nanoscience and nanotechnology institutions are taking part in this project, among them being the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona (IMB-CNM, CSIC), the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB, CSIC), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), the UAB Research Park (PRUAB) and the Catalan Institute for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2).
Next call deadline is 16 October 2017. If you are interested in coming to ICMAB and want to know more about the project, contact our Project Manager Dr. Jorge Pérez (
Don't miss the opportunity to get free access to the widest range of tools for research at the nanoscale: growth, nano-lithography, nano-characterization, theory and simulation and fine-analysis with synchrotron, FEL and neutron radiation sources.
More information:
- Birth of Europe's largest network of nanoscience infrastructures (PRUAB Newsletter, 17 November 2015)
- NFFA-Europe offers free access to widest range of tools for research at the nanoscale (PRUAB Newsletter, 7 April 2016)
- More than 100 projects access the NFFA's nano-scientific infrastructures (PRUAB Newsletter, 18 July 2017)
- NFFA-Europe website