New scientific equipment purchased within the Basque Government's Azpitek program
Representatives of the Basque Government and the technology and research centers in the BRTA, Basque Research and Technology Alliance, visit the nanoGUNE laboratories to see first-hand the new equipment acquired thanks to funding by the Basque Government's Azpitek program.
NanoGUNE`s director Jose M. Pitarke welcomed the representatives, who included Cristina Uriarte, Basque Governments Comissioner for Science, Technology and Innovation, Alberto Fernández-González, Basque Government Director of Technology and Innovation, Estibaliz Hernáez-Laviña, Basque Government Deputy Minister for Technology, Innovation and Digital Transformation, and Rikardo Bueno, head of the BRTA.
During the visit, nanoGUNE’s director highlighted the Basque center’s commitment to nanoscience and nanotechnology for the purposes of linking cutting-edge research to the production sector; this is a path that nanoGUNE has been successfully following ever since it was set up and which is essential for contributing to the Basque Country’s economic development. Pitarke stressed that nanoGUNE is working to achieve this on a day-to-day basis so that the knowledge of its team and infrastructures can be put at the service of the R&D processes of Basque and international companies.
The representatives visited nanoGUNE's cleanroom dedicated to nanofabrication given that it is the location of one of the new equipments: a mask aligner for photolithography used in the processes to produce nanodevices. Afterwards, they went to the advanced physical characterization laboratory to take a closer look at the physical properties measurement system (PPMS) used to study the properties of the nanometric devices that nanoGUNE is working on. Finally, they visited the new atomic force microscope (AFM), equipment used to measure nanoscopic properties of various advanced materials.
The visit concluded at nanoGUNE’s Electron Microscopy laboratories, a special platform that with the assistance of a highly specialized team offers the Basque Country’s scientific and technological community a unique set of advanced nanofabrication and characterization techniques. The group also had the chance to visit the new, recently installed, Cryo-FIB equipment (funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science) which nanoGUNE will be using to open two new lines of research into biological samples and batteries.
Azpitek program
The Azpitek program supports the acquisition, installation and updating of the infrastructure and scientific and technical equipment necessary to go a step further in the research being carried out. So it provides the research centers of the RVCTI (Basque Science, Technology and Innovation network) with greater resources, thus enabling them to enhance their quality and excellence, and that way achieve better results with the potential to exert a significant scientific and technological, economic and social impact on the Basque Country.
This program mainly seeks to reinforce the Basque Country’s scientific and technological infrastructures and to drive forward R&D&I activity and the validation and demonstration of their results in the areas of the 2030 STIP (Science, Technology and Innovation Plan of the Basque Country), thus supporting progress in the three transitions we are currently facing: technological-digital, energy-climate and health-social.
The program set up in 2021 has already reinforced 51 scientific and technological infrastructures.