Details of Grant 

Capital costs for equipment are added to the institutional equipment account of the holding institution. Institutional equipment accounts therefore indicate the cumulative amount awarded to that institution. Recurrent costs directly associated with equipment are awarded through a separate grant. For a full record of awards made by the EPSRC Equipment Business Case panels see: https://epsrc.ukri.org/research/ourportfolio/themes/researchinfrastructure/subthemes/equipment/supported/

EPSRC Reference:	EP/J021156/1
Title:	University of Leeds-Equipment Account
Principal Investigator:	Plant, Professor N
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:	Nion Co UK SuperSTEM Laboratory University of Glasgow University of Leeds University of Liverpool University of Manchester, The University of Oxford
Department:	Research & Innovation Services
Organisation:	University of Leeds
Scheme:	Standard Research
Starts:	01 April 2012	Ends:	31 March 2022	Value (£):	5,597,800
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Related Grants:
Panel History:	Panel Date Panel Name Outcome 07 Feb 2012 EPSRC Equipment Business Case February 2012 Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
This application seeks an EPSRC Capital Grant of £1,079,600 towards the shortfall of £2,372,600 required to install a world leading aberration-corrected & monochromated dedicated scanning transmission electron microscope (SuperSTEM3) at the EPSRC National Facility for Scanning Transmission Electron-Microscopy (STEM) (EPSRC Reference: RE-10-0005-EPSRC-STEM). The EPSRC award will be matched by contributions from elsewhere totalling £1,293,000. As part of the National Facility, SuperSTEM3 will support many users from the UK and elsewhere and have a high utilisation factor. The National Facility is run by a consortium of five Universities (Leeds, Oxford, Manchester, Glasgow and Liverpool) and is led by Prof Rik Brydson of Leeds. It is based around the SuperSTEM facility at STFC Daresbury Laboratories (www.superstem.org) but also provides access to complementary advanced instrumentation at Consortium University sites and Partner sites (currently Cambridge, Sheffield, Warwick and York). The last EPSRC review panel (2005) rated the SuperSTEM facility 'internationally outstanding'. Highlights of research impact since this review include: - a total of 104 journal publications with users (9 Nature group/PRL) - 32 invited talks and 23 conference contributions since 2007 - the first demonstration of atomically resolved EELS mapping - a significant contribution to 2010 Nobel prize winning work on graphene The National Facility was awarded £4.5M by EPSRC in the recent round of tenders for mid-range user facilities. The requirements of the tender for this facility were determined by a Statement of Need from the user community and a subsequent Town Meeting. The combination of equipment at SuperSTEM and the Consortium/Partner Universities is able to meet many, but not all, of the tender requirements. The cap £4.5M on the tender budget combined with the requirements on staffing levels meant that the capital budget was insufficient to purchase SuperSTEM3. As a fall-back position, £1,103,000 of the budget was allocated to upgrading SuperSTEM2, the more modern of the current SuperSTEM instruments. As detailed below, this is far from a satisfactory option. The new instrument, SuperSTEM3, will be housed in a new purpose-built "pod" at the SuperSTEM Lab. and will ensure the National Facility, its users and hence the UK remains at the forefront of aberration corrected STEM research and development. The combined monochromator/Cc corrector in a fully integrated state-of-the-art instrument will open up new areas for study. It will allow the full benefits of improved spatial resolution for STEM imaging and atomic resolution spectroscopy down to the low accelerating voltages necessary to study many nanomaterials. The improved energy resolution for electron spectrometry will open up new areas of study including the potential for vibrational spectroscopy.
Key Findings
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Potential use in non-academic contexts
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Impacts
Description This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk Summary Date Materialised
Sectors submitted by the Researcher
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Project URL:
Further Information:
Organisation Website:	http://www.leeds.ac.uk