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Molecular Foundry ceremonial groundbreaking, left to right: US Representative Mike Honda; Molecular Foundry director and professor Paul Alivisatos; Patricia Dehmer, DOE Associate Director of Science for Basic Energy Sciences; Sean Randolph, president of the Bay Area Economic Forum; Berkeley Lab director Charles Shank. (courtesy LBL)

When it opens in 2006 on the hill overlooking UC Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Molecular Foundry will be the crown jewel of the University's pioneering efforts in nanoscale science and engineering. On January 30, the facility's director and chemistry professor Paul Alivisatos--who holds also holds a faculty position in the department of Materials and Science Engineering--picked up a shovel for the official groundbreaking ceremony marking the start of construction on the $85 million, six-story research facility.

"Right now, scientists are inhibited in what they can do by the fact that they can't always get access to the materials they'd like to work with," Alivisatos says. "The Foundry will keep track of what nanofabrication techniques work well and make those available so all scientists can become experts. That will certainly accelerate the pace of innovation."

The SmithGroup of San Francisco designed the Molecular Foundry building. (courtesy LBL)

The Foundry is one of five Department of Energy Nanoscale Science Research Centers to be constructed in the next few years. The aim is to establish a hub for collaboration between researchers from such diverse disciplines as materials science, biology, electrical engineering, physics, and chemistry. The novel devices expected to emerge from the foundry range from incredibly precise nanosensors for the detection of environmental contaminants to highly-efficient and inexpensive flexible solar cells to ultra-fast nanocomputers.

"Berkeley is blessed with tremendous resources, such as the national supercomputing center (NERSC), the Advanced Light Source, and the National Center for Electron Microscopy," says US Secretary of Energy Abraham Spencer. "All will be instrumental in the revolution in science offered by the Molecular Foundry."

The Molecular Foundry

"Groundbreaking Marks Berkeley Lab's Leap into Nano-Revolution" (Berkeley Lab)

"Nanocrystals, Quantum Dots, and Nature's Own Assembly Line" by David Pescovitz (Lab Notes, November 2002)

Alivisatos Group Home Page

Lab Notes is published online by the Public Affairs Office of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering. The Lab Notes mission is to illuminate groundbreaking research underway today at the College of Engineering that will dramatically change our lives tomorrow.

Media contact: Teresa Moore, Lab Notes editor, Director of Public Affairs
Writer, Researcher: David Pescovitz
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© 2004 UC Regents. Updated 5/31/04.