DENTON (UNT), Texas - The 2007 Department of Defense Appropriations bill recently passed by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives - and signed into law by President George W. Bush - allocates $4 million to UNT for nanotechnology research.

The funding will add new dimensions to the cutting edge research conducted in the Advanced Research and Technology Institute (formerly known as the Center for Advanced Research and Technology) in the UNT's College of Engineering.

The provision for UNT in the bill was secured in the Senate by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and championed in the House by Representative Michael Burgess.

Dr. Oscar Garcia, founding dean of the UNT College of Engineering, said ARTI researchers in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering will devote this latest federal appropriation to further develop the infrastructure necessary for it to become a nationally viable state-of-the-art research and development facility. Its pursuits will include the study of biomaterials and bioelectronics.

In addition, ARTI intends to use a portion of the funds to further enhance its capabilities in the various areas of advanced energy materials that may, for one example, make equivalent illumination half as energy expensive as using incandescent and fluorescent light sources. Other environment-friendly energy research also is envisioned as part of this initiative.

With more than $11 million in Defense appropriation funding in 2004, 2005 and 2006, ARTI has acquired a focused ion beam microscope, a high resolution analytical transmission electron microscope, a local electrode atom probe and numerous other analytical and processing tools - making it one of the premier materials research facilities in the nation.

Using the microscopes separately and together, ARTI researchers aim to transform their academic research into actual products via a better understanding of the way materials behave at the nanometer and atomic levels and by developing the capabilities to manipulate these materials at this level. The microscopes are located in adjoining laboratories in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UNT Research Park (located at 3940 North Elm in Denton, east of Interstate 35 and near the juncture of U.S. Highway 77 and Loop 288).

The state-of-the-art atom probe, which allows research on a picotechnology level (the next level down of the metric scale from nanotech is picotech), is one of only two such instruments in the nation owned by a university. It allows researchers to generate three-dimensional atomic level pictures of samples that are either conductive, non-conductive or a mixture of the two.

UNT News Service Phone Number: (940) 565-2108
Contact: Roddy Wolper (940) 565-2943
Email: rwolper@unt.edu