UO takes significant nanostep.

Byline: Greg Bolt The Register-Guard

The University of Oregon will break ground today on a high-tech building that will house a new scientific melting pot, a place where researchers from its own and other campuses as well as private industry will use super<302>sophisticated tools to probe unimaginably tiny bits of matter.

The new integrated sciences building is the UO's piece of the statewide Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute, a joint effort of three state universities, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the region's high-tech industry. It is being funded by a package of taxable state bonds that will give outside companies an unprecedented level of access to the building's sophisticated labs and research tools.

Highlighting the statewide significance of the new building, Gov. Ted Kulongoski will be on hand to help kick off the project. UO President Dave Frohnmayer also will announce a new gift that could allow the university to go beyond the original scope of the $9.6 million, 20,000-square-foot design.

The building's name and the new donor will be announced today. The groundbreaking ceremony will take place at 11 a.m. on the lawn between Huestis and Deschutes halls, two science buildings facing East 13th Avenue.

Primarily a laboratory building, the new structure will have four main uses. First will be the home for CAMCOR, the Center for Advanced Materials Characterization in Oregon. The lab operates a suite of high-tech devices that help university and industry scientists delve into the basic structure materials used in computer chips and other applications.

It also will house labs dedicated to nanofabrication, the science of building materials from the bottom up using individual or groups of atoms. Other lab space will be dedicated to graduate student internship programs and industry research.

"It's not just another science building," said Rich Linton, the UO's vice president for research.

In one way, the building will be a step down for the university, but that's only because it's being built underground. By digging down and anchoring the structure to bedrock, it will be isolated from vibrations as well as electrical and magnetic interference.

The university won't be buying any new equipment for the lab right away.

But just moving the supersensitive instruments it already has into the vibration-free environment will be like supercharging an engine.

Chemistry professor Jim Hutchison said the instruments could perform tens or hundreds of times better.

"We're trying to see individual atoms that are a billionth of a meter or less, and the instruments are shaking," he said. "This is going to enhance the performance of just about every instrument we place there. It's a great kind of infrastructure to have to house some of the world's best instruments."

Nanotechnology is the science of manipulating objects on the nanometer scale, a billionth of a meter or about one 25 millionth of an inch. At that scale, particles take on exotic properties that create the potential for new materials or medicines and that have turned nanotech into one of the hottest fields of science.

Oregon is trying to get a piece of the nanotech boom. Oregon State University and Portland State University have their own labs under way, and the integrative sciences building puts the UO into the mix.

But the building won't be all ONAMI all the time. It will aid research in a variety of disciplines and follow the interdisciplinary research model used by the UO.

It will take that idea - lumping researchers across disciplines into the same space to spark new ideas - even further. The building not only mixes its own scientists together but those from other universities, national laboratories and private industry.

The 2003 Legislature allocated $9.6 million for the project split between lottery-backed economic development bonds and general obligation bonds. By using taxable bonds, the UO is able to open the building's doors to private industry for collaborative research projects. With taxable bonds, bond purchasers pay taxes on the interest that the state pays them.

That avoids a state restriction that limits private use of public buildings financed by tax-exempt bonds. It could be the first time all funding for a university building is provided by taxable bonds and private funding.

Although the amount of space provided to private industry will be relatively small, Linton said such collaborations have benefits for the university, for the state and for business. The UO's instruments help industry develop new products that can lead to good-paying jobs for the state, and university scientists and graduate students can explore new areas of research.

"We're making our facility available to make Oregon industry more successful," he said.

The UO also could earn some additional revenue by leasing space and equipment time in the lab or through joint development of new products, but Linton said those possibilities remain under discussion and no decisions have been made on how to structure the financial relationship between the UO and industry partners.