Big science spend to pay off for business

As the Irish economy continues its recovery, the national focus must be on maintaining and driving growth.

As a nation, we have developed as an internationally leading manufacturing hub — particularly in areas like biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors — but like many countries, Ireland faces increasing global competition from lower-cost economies.

The quality of Irish scientific research is crucial in attracting multinationals in the manufacturing, technology, biomedical, pharmaceutical and energy sectors to our shores.

The presence of world-class scientific research expertise is important in many ways; it provides the basis for research support many companies rely on, it provides access to infrastructure not routinely available in-house and provides the talent pipeline that high-tech companies require.

Ireland’s reputation as international leaders in nanoscience research continues to grow. Investment in research equipment is critical to that reputation.

The infrastructure directly benefits the ability of a nation to grow high-value manufacturing sectors.

It has been shown that companies are increasingly reliant on academic collaboration to develop new products.

It is clear that in order to anchor and attract both international and national manufacturing companies in Ireland, quality research programmes between industry and academia are crucial.

These programmes allow Irish manufacturing sites to become centres for innovation and ‘best-practice templates’ for global manufacturing. This aids national growth via revenue and job creation.

Therefore, the delivery to CRANN, the nanoscience Institute based at Trinity College Dublin, this month, of a Nion UltraStem 200 microscope is a landmark in development for Irish scientific research.

Funded by Science Foundation Ireland, this €5.7m microscope is the most expensive single piece of research infrastructure ever to be funded by the State.

It is a purpose-built piece of equipment that will allow researchers in the SFI-funded Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research centre (Amber) based at CRANN, as well as the wider Irish research community, to image and characterise materials at atomic and even sub-atomic resolution.

The Nion UltraStem is such a powerful microscope that it can show an atom within a solid at 20m times its size.

However, it is not just the scale of magnification that makes this microscope unique — it is also the sharpness of the image and the instrument’s ability to provide elemental and chemical data about the individual atoms within the solid.

The way the microscope works is by scanning a beam that has been focused down to the size of an atom, across a sample, providing chemical information on the sample.

There are very few Nion microscopes around the world and it is arguably the equivalent of a Formula-1 car representing the pinnacle of innovation and design. Amber’s Nion tool is not an ‘off the peg’ microscope.

This one has been tailored to our partner company requirements.

It will allow us to provide opportunities for new kinds of experiments and we anticipate scientists will travel from all over Europe to use it; making Ireland a global centre of excellence for microscopy research.

The Nion UltraStem 200 will allow Irish scientists to carry out world-leading research and impact sectors such as medical science, energy, agri-food and electronics and the return on investment will be significant.

Whilst equipment of this scale is expensive, it is necessary and a landmark in the development of Irish science.

The instrument will support the continued excellence of Irish research in the important areas of nanoscience and materials science that underpin a modern manufacturing economy.

Excellence in areas such as the science of 2D materials and chemistry and electronic and magnetic materials are related to the manufacture of everything from mobile phones to cars.

Through world-class facilities such as this, the Government is enabling the university system here to attract the leading talent to maintain and extend our global reputation.

The impact of leading research infrastructure, such as the Nion UltraStem 200, in the area of product manufacturing and its contribution to the national economy, cannot be underestimated.

The availability of the instrument is critical to research carried out within Amber industry partner companies such as Intel, Alcatel-Lucent (Nokia) and Western Digital.

To support such partnerships Irish science must provide world-class research expertise and infrastructure, such as the nion.

Investment by the Government in this instrument shouldn’t be a one-off event but rather a landscape change in the way we value science nationally.

Professor Michael Morris is director of Amber, the Science Foundation Ireland funded materials science centre based at Trinity College Dublin