The University of Delaware has been awarded $1.9 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to establish the new Center for Spintronics and Biodetection.

Spin electronics, or "spintronics," is an emerging science that focuses on harnessing the "spin," or magnetic properties of electrons, to encode and process data.

The high-tech field is expected to significantly broaden the electronics industry by fostering the development of much smaller, faster, energy-saving devices, from medical diagnostic equipment to environmental sensors that can detect nano-sized particles much tinier than human cells.

UD's research grant is part of $7.5 million grant awarded to universities in four states--Delaware, Kentucky, Maine, and New Hampshire--by DOE's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), which supports scientific research in states that historically have received less federal funding for such studies. Academic institutions in 26 states and territories were eligible for the grants.

Delaware's state EPSCoR office, located at UD's Delaware Biotechnology Institute, helped coordinate the University's winning proposal. A major collaborator on the UD project is Argonne National Laboratory, one of DOE's largest research centers, located near Chicago.

"These partnerships with national labs are very important," David McCarren, co-director of the state EPSCoR office, said. "They allow Delaware researchers access to the best instrumentation available and put them at the cutting edge of their fields, working with scientists at those sites."

John Xiao, professor of physics and astronomy in UD's College of Arts and Sciences, will direct the new center and serve as one of its principal investigators.

The other principal investigators include Edmund Nowak, associate professor, and Branislav Nikolic and Yi Ji, assistant professors, all in the UD physics and astronomy department; James Ko
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Contact: Tracey Bryant
tbryant@udel.edu
302-831-8185
University of Delaware
24-Apr-2007