The Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing ("CHN") at Northeastern University provides state-of-the-art capabilities for the fabrication and study of nano-products, nanoscale materials and nanoscale manufacturing processes. The CHN is a research-based user facility, open to leading scientists and younger scholars from around the world. Established in Boston in 2004 by the US National Science Foundation., the CHN's nanomanufacturing research program is creating new processes for making nanoproducts and aiding in the design of specific nanoproducts, such as sensors, biomedical devices, or batteries.
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The NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing (CHN) is one of four nanoscale engineering research centers funded by the NSF. Since 2004, the CHN has carried out over $50 million in research funded by NSF, government agencies, foundations and the private sector. It has affiliated scientists and researchers at Northeastern University, University of Massachusetts-Lowell, University of New Hampshire, Michigan State University and the Museum of Science. The founding director and principal investigator is Dr. Ahmed Busnaina.
Scientific Themes
Research is carried out in several fields: directed assembly and transfer of nanoparticle, environmental health & safety for nanomanufacturing, and regulatory & ethical issues related to nanoproducts. Center Staff have written or published hundreds of reports, studies, book chapters and papers, such as General Safe Practices for Working with Engineered Nanomaterials in Research Laboratories, produced in 2012 under contract from NIOSH.
The Center also carries out educational and outreach programs, including training for teachers and research experiences for undergraduates.
Research Facilities
The CHN is housed in a new building consisting of offices and nano-tech laboratories on Northeastern's campus in Boston. The Laboratory Facilities include capabilities in offset nanoscale printing, nanopatterning, optical lithography, transmission electron microscopy, along with a full lab for chip fabrication and clean rooms and other support instrumentation.
User Program
The CHN is affiliated with a national user facility, accessible to researchers at universities, and industrial and national laboratories. The user program provides access to state-of-the-art laboratory facilities staffed by scientists and technical support personnel who are active in nanomanufacturing research. Users may conduct either non-proprietary (pre-competitive research to be published) or proprietary research. Prospective users must designate if any/all of their user proposal involves proprietary information and if any of the user project, if accepted, would be proprietary work. For proprietary work at the CHN, full-cost recovery is required and a proprietary research agreement must be in place prior to starting work. CHN makes efforts to secure appropriate intellectual property control so that proprietary-research users can exploit their experimental results.
General Users are researchers or research group that use the CHN’s facilities for non-proprietary research.
Partner Users are General users who also enhance the facility capabilities and/or contribute to the Center operation. They typically help develop products or instrumentation in some manner, either by bringing external financial and/or intellectual capital into the development of the facility. These contributions must be made available to the General Users and, therefore, benefit the overall User Program as well as the facility. In recognition of their investment, Partner Users are provided negotiated access to one or more capabilities over a period of several years.
Rapid Access: Users who feel that the timeliness of their research may be negatively affected by the length of the whole proposal-review process can request Rapid Access. Proposals submitted for rapid access are reviewed and approved by the CHN Director, technically assisted, if necessary, by pertinent research group or facility leaders. Besides being feasible at the CHN and scientifically important, proposals being considered for Rapid Access must include a justification of the time-sensitive nature of the project.