The Universities of Manchester and Oxford will be joining the SuperSTEM consortium in conjunction with the re-launch of SuperSTEM as the £4.5M EPSRC National Facility for Aberration-Corrected STEM in mid-September.

Scientists of both Universities have long standing collaborations with SuperSTEM. These collaborations include the characterisation of graphene (which contributed to the Nobel Prize winning word of Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov), other 2-D crystals, nanotubes, nanowires, ceramics and composites.

The extended SuperSTEM consortium, now consisting of the Universities of Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Oxford and led by the University of Leeds, carried forward the successful bid for the new EPSRC National Facility. The contract award for SuperSTEM is a testament to the internationally leading research carried out under the existing smaller SuperSTEM consortium and the future capabilities of the extended SuperSTEM consortium.

The new EPSRC National Facility for Aberration-Corrected STEM will provide “free at point of use” access to cutting-edge instruments for EPSRC funded researchers within the UK, and, also for non-EPSRC and commercial users within the utilisation limits of the facility and subject to funding. The principal location of the new EPSRC National Facility will be the SuperSTEM site at the STFC Daresbury Laboratory.

The expansion of the SuperSTEM consortium not only strenghtens the collaborations between the Universities and SuperSTEM but also allows users of the EPSRC National Facility access to specialised aberration corrected instruments at the the new consortium universities, and external partner Universities such as Cambridge, Sheffield and Warwick where required. These will provide access to additional important capabilities for STEM users.