A Montana State University core research facility described by its director as a “portal to the magical world of nanoscience” has received funding for a sophisticated instrument to support multidisciplinary research at MSU and across the state.

The National Science Foundation’s Division of Materials Research and EPSCoR program have awarded $833,000 for a new X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy system. The new instrument will be housed in MSU’s Imaging and Chemical Analysis Laboratory in Barnard Hall and will restore the small-spot elemental and chemical surface analysis capability lost when the former, 25-year old XPS spectrometer became irreparable in 2020.

News of the grant was a welcome gift for ICAL, awarded on the facility’s 33rd birthday in September. Since 2015, ICAL has been one of six MSU labs in the Montana Nanotechnology Facility, an NSF-supported user consortium. ICAL is home to numerous instruments used by physicists, chemists, microbiologists, geologists, engineers and other researchers to characterize the microscopic chemical and physical properties of materials. ICAL director and founder Recep Avci said the original XPS was among the first essential instruments the facility acquired to support surface and interface science research at MSU.