News

SHINE consortium receives NWO funding to combine the best of two worlds

A consortium consisting of AMOLF and other academic partners in the Netherlands receives funding from the NWO Research Infrastructure (RI) call for the project ‘Shining light on atomic-scale processes’ (SHINE). AMOLF’s group leader Wiebke Albrecht (Hybrid Nanosystems) is the principal investigator. The total budget for the duration of the project is 3 million euros.

SHINE
The SHINE project provides exciting opportunities bringing together two research developments that have made substantial progress during the last couple of years. First, using modern transmission electron microscopes researchers are now able to routinely visualize materials all the way down to the atomic level. Second, recent developments in the fields of nanophotonics and plasmonics make it possible to concentrate light nearly to the atomic scale within picoseconds, opening up unprecedented control over where, when and how energy is injected into a material. Using highly advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM) equipment, the SHINE project allows researchers to bring light directly into the transmission electron microscope and thus watch solar harvesting materials transform at the atomic level under relevant operating conditions.

In addition to providing research opportunities, the SHINE project is expected to strengthen the network of sustainable energy materials researchers. SHINE is unique in Europe and will therefore also initiate new collaborations, making long-sought experiments possible and connect researchers from different fields (e.g. TEM and nanomaterial scientists).

Consortium
The SHINE consortium partners are: AMOLF, University of Amsterdam (UvA), Vrije Universiteit (VU) and the Advanced Research Center for Nanolithography (ARCNL). SHINE will be part of the National Electron Microscopy Infrastructure (NEMI), which coordinates electron microscopy investments in the Netherlands.

Read more about the NWO Research Infrastructure grants on the NWO website.