About us
Introduction
Nanoscopy Facilities for Analytical ChemisTry (NanoFACT) is a Wageningen-centered multi-instrument facility with the goal of providing chemical identity, composition and structure information from the micron-scale to the nanometer-scale for a wide-open range of organic, inorganic, biological and food samples. Our facility is globally unique since it integrates under one roof a set of high-end characterization physical and analytical technologies working beyond the diffraction limit of light.
Aim
The overall aim of NanoFACT is to provide a multi-angle and correlative approach towards chemical information at the nanoscale. Its strength is twofold: 1) we can provide detailed information from a range of individual analytical techniques; 2) due to the wide range of techniques and our experience with this, this provides unique combinations of information using chemometrics and multivariate data analysis. The chemical information provided by NanoFACT at the nanoscale will be increasingly critical in a broad range of applications in materials and life sciences.
Our place in the Netherlands
The Netherlands has a strong combination of nanotechnology labs, e.g. via the Nanolab NL consortium. NanoFACT takes its place in the national framework by focusing typically on carbon-containing samples. In addition, our focus is often not so much on pristine samples that need in-situ preparation under UHV conditions (there are several excellent nanotech facilities in the Netherlands for that), but on complex samples, soft matter, carbon-containing samples and samples with organic monolayers or thin polymer coatings.
Executive Board
The NanoFACT facility is run by an Executive Board, formed of dr. Francesco Simone Ruggeri (Director and Chairman, Simone.Ruggeri@wur.nl) prof. Han Zuilhof (co-director, Han.Zuilhof@wur.nl), prof. Jasper van der Gucht (co-director, jasper.vandergucht@wur.nl).