Infrastructures & Facilities 

Regarding the facilities from both the research and training perspectives, MNat has excellent laboratories and university departments. MNat has internationally recognized training programs (master and doctorate), which are an international reference because of their quality. As an example, more than 65% of students are attracted from outside the scope of UGR and more than 35% come from universities in other countries.

 

The resources and services might include libraries, reading and meeting rooms, computer rooms and other similar facilities necessary to carry out activities of exhibition and defence of work plans, seminars and conferences, the latter equipped with the most advanced audiovisual media. The infrastructures and material resources available also include laboratories and scientific equipment necessary for the execution of the work plans proposed by the students within the different lines of research that are developed in our Programs.

 

MNat’s master and doctoral programs have been evaluated by the Spanish Government, obtaining the best qualifications and leading their respective areas.

 

MNat’s laboratories, like all other resources, are connected with each other and complementary around the four pivotal lines which form the basis of MNat. As an example, in the research and treatment of marine aggregates, in addition to the resources of the Ecology laboratories MNat is using elasticity and plasticity studies from the Fluids and Biocoloids laboratory, as well as resistance and porosity analysis from the Nanoelectronics laboratory. This process is also being carried out in the field of the mechanical properties of tumor cells as opposed to non-tumor cells, where, in addition to the Biomedical laboratory and those mentioned above, the Ultrasonics laboratory is involved in the analysis of wave-tumor interactions. The potential of MNat laboratories is growing significantly in the period 2015-2019 in which the Unit has received more than EUR 4.5 million investment in infrastructure to expand its capabilities. In addition to MNat own laboratories, the Unit has the facilities granted by the Center for Scientific Instrumentation at UGR, which provides very useful and modern means to carry out the tasks. One of the consequences of the eventual MNat awarding with the mention 'María de Maeztu' would be the acceleration of the project to unify its different laboratories in the same area. On the other hand, MNat’s laboratories are connected to those most internationally advanced on each of the research topics, either through agreements or collaborations.

 

 

Some of the features of MNat laboratories are:

 

1) The Biomedical laboratory is located in the Biomedical Research Centre (CIBM) of the Granada Health Technology Park (PTS), and enables activation of target genes, clustering in cell signaling, cell mechanics, mechanical waves and cell interaction, tumor stem cells, regeneration, and microenvironment on living cultures with laminar flow cabinets and stoves. CIBM has an extensive range of state-of-the-art techniques (centrally located, properly maintained and managed by experts). These include cutting edge laboratories for cellular and molecular studies equipped with: laminar flow hoods; cell incubators; cold chambers; fridges and freezers (+4º/-20°/-80ºC); refrigerated micro- and ultra-centrifuges; sonicators; magnetic stirrers; precision balances; pH meters; cryostats; UV transilluminators; vertical electrophoresis systems; liquid nitrogen containers; spectrophotometers; confocal and fluorescence microscopes; plate readers; qPCR systems; Luminex 200 Systems, etc. Also, the CIBM includes GLP3 suite; a Flow Cytometry unit (equipped with FACSCalibur and FACSCanto Cell sorters and analyzers); animal experimentation facility with a surface of 800m2; IVIS facility; sample processing and pathology services for histological studies. Seminar rooms and theatres are also available to the fellow. CIBM houses the Node Coordination of Biobank of the Andalusia Public Health System that offers fresh, frozen and fixed samples derived from patients with neoplastic diseases. Moreover, since the hosting group is member of the Institute of Bio-sanitary Research (ibs.GRANADA, http://www.ibsgranada.es/), it has access to three scientific platforms: clinical trials and clinical epidemiology; biobanking and disease register; and scientific and technical services. Finally, the group has full access to other analysis and imaging techniques at the Center for Scientific Instrumentation (http://cic.ugr.es) at UGR.

 

2) The Nanoelectronics, Graphene and 2D materials at the UGR is a dynamic and international group ideally located within an outstanding multidisciplinary research environment with strong collaborations with the Chemistry, Physics, Electronics and Medicine departments, the Center for Scientific Instrumentation at the UGR, and the Institute for BioHealth Research of Granada. The Nanoelectronics group is composed of 14 staff members with long record in the hosting and integrating of postdoctoral researchers. The group has also a strong track record in training young scientists that have been incorporated to industrial laboratories and academia.

 

 

Facilities for numerical simulation

Hardware: Linux cluster (192 cores/320GB RAM), supercomputer SUN Fire X2200 (1264 computing cores, 3 TB RAM memory, 24 TB of shared storage); supercomputer Alhambra (1808 cores (3616 threads), 4.28 TB RAM memory, 72 TB shared storage).

Software: Home-made nanoscale device simulation suite, 1D Schrödinger-Poisson solver for CV and tunneling gate current calculation, and ab-initio SIESTA and Quantum Expresso for devices based on 2D semiconductors. Synopsys TCAD suite.

 

Facilities for electrical and structural characterization 

100 m2 laboratory equipped with AFM, XPS spectroscopy, Raman microspectrometer; high-resolution SEM and TEM microscopes; semiautomatic 300 mm probe stations; manual Cryogenic Probe Station (4.5K-450K) with magnetic capability up to 0.3T; pseudo-MOSFET characterization set-up; noise characterization system; semiconductor analyzers for IV, CV measurements; impedance analyzer 40Hz-110MHz; PNA-X network analyzer (10MHz-26.5GHz).

 

Facilities for fabrication 

A 20m2 class 1000 clean room hosts the lithography equipment, a direct laser writing system with a resolution of 0.1um and two lasers, one of 375nm and a second one of 266nm. The rest of equipment for TMDs fabrication is placed in a class 10000 clean room with 120m2. A PVD deposition system is used for metal deposition. The system allows the deposition up to metallic layers by thermal evaporation and/or e-beam evaporation without breaking the vacuum. An oxidation furnace for the thermal growth of SiO2 (wet, dry and steam) is available. The growth of 2D-materials is performed in a CVD furnace with two quartz tubes to avoid cross contamination (Planartech). Graphene, hBN, and major TMDs (transition metal dichalcogenides) can be grown. A Reactive Ion Etching system with Ar, SF6 and CF4 is used to etch the deposited layers and resists. An O2 plasma cleaner and an ozone cleaner are also available for surface treatment.

 

 

3) Aquatic biogeochemistry laboratory (Reche´s team). This laboratory is dedicated to the characterization of dissolved and particulate organic matter and greenhouse gases. It is equipped with: a Shimadzu TOC-V-CSH Organic Total Carbon Analyzer with TNM-1 coupled nitrogen module; a Perkin-Elmer UV-VIS LAMBDA 45 spectrophotometer (+UV WinLab 5 software); a spectrofluorometer JY-Horiba Spex Fluoromax-4; a Picarro CRDS Analyzer (G2508) to measure in quasi-continuous and simultaneous mode the flows of greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, N2O); a Seabird 19plus CTD profiler coupled to Spherical Underwater Quantum Sensor (LI-193R); and a fluorimeter Turner® SCUFA (model CYCLOPS–7), sediment traps, and several filtration and sampling devices. Recently, Reche and Rueda´s team have installed a floating platform for continuous recording and interpretation of greenhouse gas emissions including a Eddy Covariance tower (Licor LI-7500DS Open Path CO2/H2O and Licor LI7700 Open Path CH4), submergible probes for dissolved CH4 (CONTROS HydroCTM CH4), temperature profiles, oxygen profiles (TriOS DO), chlorophyll a (Nano-Flu), CO2 profiles (ATM), and CDOM (Nano-Flu).

 

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