Quadrennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (2025): Securing U.S. Global Leadership Through Renewed and Expanded Infrastructure (2025)
Chapter: 2 Opportunities and Barriers for Renewing and Coordinating the Nation's Global Leadership in Nanotechnology Research and Development Infrastructure
2
Opportunities and Barriers for Renewing and Coordinating the Nation’s Global Leadership in Nanotechnology Research and Development Infrastructure
In its examination of the position of the nation’s nanotechnology-relevant infrastructure, the committee was tasked to explore the opportunities and barriers for sustaining and coordinating the nation’s global leadership in nanotechnology research and development (R&D) infrastructure.
GLOBAL BENCHMARKING ON NANOTECHNOLOGY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT INFRASTRUCTURE
The committee recognizes that U.S. success in nanotechnology is linked to the investment in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), which has a mission to bring multiple federal agencies, academic entities, and the private sector together on a shared vision to understand and deploy knowledge of novel interactions and processes at the nanoscale for generating innovative technologies to benefit societies. Indeed, multiple agencies acknowledge a link to the mission of the NNI. Currently, under the NNI, major federally funded nanotechnology R&D user facilities under the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Institute
of Standards and Technology (NIST) are spread across 18 states1 in the United States. These facilities are sites for stimulating cross-disciplinary innovation and otherwise unlikely collaborations and discoveries, propelling the United States to an early advantage in nanotechnology-based innovation across various sectors, most notably in energy and transportation and health care (see Figure 2-1). At the outset of the program, the easy access to these facilities and the accompanying hands-on training gained by users, many of whom are trainees, made the United States a global leader in skilled nanotechnology workforce.
The uniqueness of this initiative, in particular the industry–academic partnerships and the accompanying massive infrastructure investment, has helped spur new nano-enabled technologies in medicine, electronics, agriculture, transportation, and energy generation and storage, and more. However, the early U.S. lead began to wane in the early 2000s.
In 2020, the Committee on National Nanotechnology Initiative: A Quadrennial Review was charged to evaluate the relative U.S. position compared to other nations with respect to nanotechnology R&D, including trends in the development of nanotechnology science and engineering and the identification of any critical research where the United States should be the world leader to achieve the goals of the program. As outlined in that committee’s report, A Quadrennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative: Nanoscience, Applications, and Commercialization (hereafter the 2020 NNI Quadrennial Review),2 the United States was an early leader in nanoscience and nanotechnology research and infrastructure and U.S. national investment was on par with other developed nations—notably Western Europe and Japan.
As detailed in the 2020 NNI Quadrennial Review, the United States had a lead in many indicators for research and development leadership, notably in the number of patents and nanotechnology papers. Figure 2-1 (Figure 3.1 in the 2020 NNI Quadrennial Review) shows that the United States and the European Union led in the number of nanotechnology papers published in archival journals, with the United States lagging behind the European Union modestly while keeping pace. However, China took a modest lead over the United States and the European Union
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1 The National Science Foundation’s 16 National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure sites are located in Arizona, California (two sites), Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. The Department of Energy’s Nanoscale Science Research Centers are located in California, Illinois, New Mexico, New York, and Tennessee; the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Cancer Institute’s Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory are located in Maryland.
2 See Appendix A in National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2020, A Quadrennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative: Nanoscience, Applications, and Commercialization, The National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/25729.
SOURCES: (a–c) Reprinted from National Research Council, 2020, A Quadrennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative: Nanoscience, Applications, and Commercialization, National Academies Press, based on data from Z. Wang, A.L. Porter, S. Kwon, J. Youtie, P. Shapira, S.F. Carley, and X. Liu, 2019, “Updating a Search Strategy to Track Emerging Nanotechnologies,” Journal of Nanoparticle Research 21(9):199. (d) Data from Scopus database, http://www.scopus.com.
in 2013. This lead has since grown exponentially as presented in Figure 2-1. China now far outpaces the United States and Europe in nanotechnology papers. A similar trend is seen with the number of patents, an indicator of potential commercial impact. China took over the lead from the United States in global nanotechnology patent count in 2010 and has grown the gap substantially since then (Figures 2-2 and 2-3). As shown in Figure 2-4, these trends have not reversed as the U.S. publication rate has remained steady, while China’s continues to grow even through 2022. A similar conclusion can be drawn from Figure 2-5, which shows papers identified as “nanotechnology” related using a bibliometric approach drawn from Figure 1-5.
Across the board, the United States has seen a flattening of this critical metric for nanotechnology R&D where there was rapid growth from China in the same period. Based on this trend, the 2020 NNI Quadrennial Review concluded that the stagnation experienced by U.S. nanotechnology R&D is likely linked to a stagnation
SOURCE: Data from StatNano, n.d., “Nanotechnology Patents in USPTO (Patent),” https://statnano.com/report/s103/4/excel/1, accessed May 1, 2025.
and, in some regards, diminished federal investment in U.S. nano infrastructure (see Table 2-1-1 in Box 2-1).
As will be discussed, much of the equipment in federal and academic facilities are aging, and capabilities lag behind due to the lack of current state-of-the-art tools. Stagnation is happening at the same time other countries, such as China, are more heavily investing in their scientific infrastructure. In 2024, the United States is no longer a leader in key indicators of scientific productivity in areas of science and engineering highly relevant to nanotechnology, as shown in Figures 2-4 and 2-5.3 As noted in the caption for Figure 2-5, the committee considered papers with the word “nano” in the title, abstract, or keywords. Some papers on quantum may
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3 The Economist, 2024, “China Has Become a Scientific Superpower,” The Economist, June 12, https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/06/12/china-has-become-a-scientific-superpower.
SOURCE: National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2024, “The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2024,” https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20243/translation-u-s-and-global-science-technology-and-innovation-capabilities.
be nano related but are not included in the committee’s discussion. While quantum papers may include use of nanotechnology facilities in doing the experiments, the study’s statement of task is on the NNI, so further analysis on quantum and other technologies that exceeds that committee’s work in Chapter 3 is beyond the scope of the study.
For example, the United States now lags other countries in high-impact paper publications as well as nanotechnology patents (see Figures 1-5, 2-1, and 2-3). This loss of intellectual leadership has negative consequences for both national security and the U.S. economy.
Finding 2.1: The United States is losing its leadership in nanotechnology.
NOTE: Search to display the proportion of papers that include “nano*” in the title, abstract, or key words. The asterisk (*) signifies that the results included terms that start with “nano,” such as nanotechnology. Unit terms such as “nanometer,” “nanometre,” and “nanosecond” were excluded.
SOURCE: Scopus database, http://www.scopus.com.
BARRIER: FALSE PERCEPTION THAT COORDINATION IS NO LONGER NEEDED
The committee found that while the expansive nanotechnology infrastructure of the United States provides outstanding opportunities for scientific and technology innovation, a number of challenges and barriers have to be recognized and addressed for the United States to regain its leadership and further develop its potential. These challenges are not fundamentally insurmountable, nor are they based on exogenous factors. Rather, they require both financial resources and government-wide coordination to overcome.
One of the challenges facing the national nanotechnology infrastructure is a perception that nanotechnology is a mature field, giving the false impression that coordination and dedicated support are no longer needed. Through numerous committee interviews, the committee found that this perception cannot be further from the truth. The committee identified nanotechnology as a deeply enabling area, one that is central to the continuing growth and evolution of many research disciplines. Experts who spoke to the committee highlighted the need for an agile infrastructure that can support research and commercialization in emerging fields.
As an example of how the user base of nanotechnology facilities has evolved, consider the word cloud diagrams in Figures 2-6, 2-7, and 2-8. These capture keywords from nanotechnology publications over 5-year periods starting 2009 through 2024. The evolution and diversification of the keywords is apparent as new fields, such as drug delivery which did not appear until 2014–2024, were enabled by nanotechnology. Growth in nanotechnology-enabled research areas leads to expansion of users from disciplines and sectors that may not have been heavily engaged in the past. These characteristics align with the aspirational goals of the facilities, and as such, support for the diversification of research areas would be a natural focus of the future NNI and an opportunity to strengthen the impact of the nation’s infrastructure.
While some aspects of nanotechnology may be more mature, many related areas require advances to provide the necessary leading-edge capabilities for nanotechnology-related research and commercialization. But perhaps more critically, nanotechnology is by no means a homogeneous field of study. There is a diversity of research areas and commercial development that increasingly, and sometimes unexpectedly, depend on nanotechnology to advance the field or technology. As Chapter 3 indicates, the world of nanotechnology is constantly evolving to address the needs of emerging fields in disciplines across the natural and engineering sciences. Notably, these fields include areas of national security and defense that require the United States to have the most advanced capabilities available.
Similarly, the perception that nanotechnology no longer requires coordination due to its maturity was found to be incorrect. The committee learned through
BOX 2-1
2022 Federal Investment in Nanotechnology Research Infrastructure and Instrumentation
Table 2-1-1 shows federal funding in nanotechnology for 2022 by agency and Program Component Area (PCA), with PCA 3 being for “Research Infrastructure and Instrumentation.”
TABLE 2-1-1 Actual 2022 Agency Investments by Program Component Area (PCA) (dollars in millions)
| Agency | 1. Foundational Research | 2. Nanotechnology - Enabled Applications, Devices, and Systems | 3. Research Infrastructure and Instrumentation | 4. Education and Workforce Development | 5. Responsible Development | NNI Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPSC | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.2 | 0.2 |
| DOC/NIST | 15.4 | 9.2 | 28.2 | 0.0 | 3.5 | 56.3 |
| DOD | 184.0 | 73.8 | 15.1 | 0.0 | 1.2 | 274.1 |
| DOE | 220.7 | 88.8 | 150.8 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 460.3 |
| DOI/USBR | 0.0 | 0.3 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.3 |
| DOJ/NIJ | 0.5 | 1.8 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 2.3 |
| EPA | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 4.1 | 4.1 |
| HHS (total) | 207.4 | 878.1 | 22.4 | 3.6 | 22.5 | 1134.0 |
|
BARDA* |
0.0 | 352.1 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 352.1 |
|
FDA |
0.3 | 4.3 | 1.6 | 0.0 | 1.8 | 7.9 |
|
NIH** |
207.1 | 521.7 | 20.8 | 3.6 | 11.5 | 764.7 |
|
NIOSH |
0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 9.2 | 9.2 |
| NASA | 1.1 | 10.5 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 11.6 |
| NSF | 329.8 | 139.5 | 27.7 | 30.9 | 17.3 | 545.1 |
| USDA (total) | 4.8 | 23.3 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 2.6 | 32.9 |
|
ARS |
0.0 | 5.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 5.0 |
|
FS |
0.6 | 4.1 | 1.1 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 5.7 |
|
NIFA |
4.2 | 14.2 | 0.0 | 1.2 | 2.6 | 22.2 |
| TOTAL † | 963.6 | 1225.2 | 245.3 | 35.7 | 51.5 | 2521.1 |
* BARDA’s 2022 investment includes $350 million in supplemental funding, in PCA 2.
** NIH totals include $2.4 million in supplemental 2022 funding, for PCA 2.
† Totals may not add due to rounding.
NOTE: Acronyms provided in Appendix B.
SOURCE: National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO), 2024, “The National Nanotechnology Initiative Supplement to the President’s 2024 Budget,” https://www.nano.gov/sites/default/files/pub_resource/NNI-FY24-Budget-Supplement.pdf, Table 3. CC BY 3.0.
Program Component Area Definitions
PCA 1. Foundational Research. The foundational research under PCA 1 includes the following: (1) discovery and development of fundamental knowledge pertaining to new phenomena in the physical, biological, chemical, and engineering sciences that occur at the nanoscale; (2) elucidation of scientific and engineering principles related to nanoscale structures, processes, and mechanisms; and (3) research aimed at discovery and synthesis of novel nanoscale and nanostructured materials and at a comprehensive understanding of the properties of nanomaterials ranging across length scales, and including interface interactions. This PCA encompasses basic research aimed at addressing national needs and priorities as well as undirected research aimed at expanding the frontiers of science and technology.
PCA 2. Nanotechnology-Enabled Applications, Devices, and Systems. PCA 2 covers research and development (R&D) that applies the principles of nanoscale science and engineering to create novel devices and systems, or to improve existing ones. It includes the incorporation of nanoscale or nanostructured materials and the processes required to achieve improved performance or new functionality. This PCA includes metrology, scale-up, manufacturing technology, and nanoscale reference materials and standards. To meet this definition, the enabling science and technology must be at the nanoscale, but the applications, systems, and devices themselves are not restricted to that size.
PCA 3. Research Infrastructure and Instrumentation. PCA 3 supports the establishment and operation of user facilities and networks, acquisition of major instrumentation, and other activities that develop, support, or enhance the nation’s physical, data, and cyber infrastructure for nanoscale science, engineering, and technology. It includes R&D pertaining to the tools needed to advance nanotechnology research and commercialization, including informatics tools and next-generation instrumentation for characterization, measurement, synthesis, and design of materials, structures, devices, and systems.
PCA 4. Education and Workforce Development. PCA 4 supports research on and development of curriculum and other tools for effective training of students at all stages of education (from K–12 to community colleges and vocational schools, through doctoral and postdoctoral education) in the skills needed to succeed in the nanotechnology workforce. While student support to perform research is captured in other categories, dedicated educational efforts ranging from outreach to advanced training are included here as resources supporting the nanotechnology workforce. PCA 4 also includes support for programs, partnerships, or personnel exchanges among government, academia, and industry to develop the desired workforce skills and competencies. This PCA further encompasses mechanisms for public engagement and informal education.
PCA 5. Responsible Development. PCA 5 covers a broad range of activities to ensure responsible development of nanotechnology. Activities include R&D directed at understanding the potential environmental, health, and safety impacts of nanotechnology, and at assessing, managing, and mitigating identified risks. Research addressing the broad implications of nanotechnology for society is also captured in this PCA. Responsible development encompasses efforts to benefit society addressing topics such as social, economic, ethical, and legal considerations. Research integrity, safety, and reproducibility are also captured in PCA 5.
NOTE: Data from a keyword search from Scopus, including “nano*” in the title, abstract, or keywords. The asterisk (*) signifies that the results included terms that start with “nano,” such as nanotechnology. Unit terms such as “nanometer,” “nanometre,” and “nanosecond” were excluded.
SOURCE: Data from Scopus database, http://www.scopus.com; image courtesy of FreeWordCloud Generator.com.
NOTE: Data from a keyword search of Scopus, including “nano*” in the title, abstract, or keywords. The asterisk (*) signifies that the results included terms that start with “nano,” such as nanotechnology. Unit terms such as “nanometer,” “nanometre,” and “nanosecond” were excluded.
SOURCE: Data from Scopus database, http://www.scopus.com; image courtesy of FreeWordCloud Generator.com.
NOTE: Data from a keyword search of Scopus, including “nano*” in the title, abstract, or keywords. The asterisk (*) signifies that the results included terms that start with “nano,” such as nanotechnology. Unit terms such as “nanometer,” “nanometre,” and “nanosecond” were excluded.
SOURCE: Data from Scopus database, http://www.scopus.com; image courtesy of FreeWordCloud Generator.com.
interviews and discussions that coordination is needed now more than ever. Good examples of coordinated activities exist throughout the NNI.
Finding 2.2: The National Nanotechnology Coordination Office hosts many public engagement activities to bring together the nanotechnology community, share information, and carry out outreach to students.
Finding 2.3: Concerning user facilities, the NSF-funded National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI) and the DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers provide extensive coordination and data tracking for the facilities that are a part of their respective networks, not across networks (e.g., NSF and DOE).
For example, in October 2024, the NNCI’s annual conference gathered directors of its nanotechnology user facilities together to discuss best practices and operations. Beyond these networks, the committee found that community-driven efforts such as the biennial University Government Industry Micro/Nanotechnology symposium also provided a forum for sharing ideas and best practices across the U.S. nanotechnology ecosystem. The committee learned in its conversations with leaders and participants in the field that more coordination would be beneficial.
Conclusion 2.1: Coordination among the different facilities and evolving infrastructure is critical for researchers and industries to understand the available landscape of U.S. nanotechnology infrastructure offerings.
Conclusion 2.2: Coordination is critical for knowledge transfer and training among facilities to develop and drive best operational practices and efficiencies.
Conclusion 2.3: Coordination can lead to greater democratization of access as different agencies and facilities work together to create administrative mechanisms to facilitate access; ensure that tool sets are appropriate for evolving needs; and better track the economic, scientific, and technological impact of the U.S. nanotechnology investment.
Conclusion 2.4: Coordination helps to minimize or avoid duplication of capabilities and thereby to increase the breadth of capabilities and ability to meet the needs of various research communities.
Recommendation 2.1: The National Nanotechnology Coordination Office should continue to annually convene key stakeholders in nanotechnology infrastructure to share best practices, coordinate agency investments, and ensure all facilities have a common connection.
BARRIER: REPORTING VARIABILITY AND ADMINISTRATIVE BURDENS
While reporting on infrastructure is valuable, the committee also understands the administrative burdens that it requires. This is a barrier for the nanotechnology infrastructure and it is important that every effort be made to make it simple and efficient for any nanotechnology facility to report on its activities. In addition, the type of metrics used by different agencies vary (e.g., NSF supported, DOE supported, those supported by private and public universities).
The different requirements for different facilities and lack of coordination among facilities can also lead to access challenges. The requirements for access, intellectual property, and training at one facility do not easily translate to another. Potential users who may need to access multiple facilities for their nanotechnology needs have to navigate an administrative and bureaucratic maze that can disincentivize their use of the infrastructure.
While it is important that different facilities be free to select the information of most value to them, the complete uncoupling of the different types of nanotechnology infrastructure facilities creates real challenges for strategic planning. There are commonly desired metrics that transcend all such facilities, such as the types of tools available, user demand, the means to access, and tool up-time. By agreeing
on this common set of measures, the U.S. nanotechnology infrastructure can better inform the public of resource availability. It could also identify gaps and needs more strategically, ensuring a high-yield investment in nanotechnology infrastructure.
Finding 2.4: The impact of the U.S. nanotechnology infrastructure can be challenging to assess owing to the variability in reporting from different facilities and the burdens created by the reporting process.
Finding 2.5: While different families of facilities (e.g., NSF-funded NNCI or DOE-funded national laboratories) have centralized databases that show metrics and report on the use and impact of their facilities, the committee could find no such centralized resource that compiles reports from all facilities. See the committee’s recommendation regarding a census in Chapter 1.
Conclusion 2.5: The lack of centralized data gathering from non–federally supported facilities, such as those privately operated or funded by research universities, leads to an underestimate of the true national and global impact of U.S. nanotechnology infrastructure and creates a barrier to access and use. For instance, simple data such as where a potential user can find a particular tool or facility to access the infrastructure are not readily available.
Recommendation 2.2: Within 2 years, the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office should create and then maintain a facilities reporting and user metrics database for all nanotechnology infrastructure that is streamlined, standardized, and eventually automated.
BARRIER: INSUFFICIENT METRICS
The committee further found that in some cases infrastructure metrics themselves are not well aligned with the goal of ensuring U.S. leadership in nanotechnology infrastructure. For instance, many facilities primarily focus their attention on the number of journal papers or the numbers of paper citations of work that used their resources. While productivity and high-impact academic work is important, these metrics do not capture infrastructure use that leads to economic impact or improved and more accessible education and workforce development. As a result, facilities can place enormous emphasis on providing users access for publication-focused research projects instead of balancing their portfolio with higher risk projects, commercial development studies, and/or training efforts.
Regarding funding issues, some of the most pressing challenges and barriers are related to inequalities in financial support that have potentially negative impacts on U.S. nanotechnology infrastructure. The committee recognized that the NNI
itself does not directly appropriate funding to support the nanotechnology research and infrastructure. Rather, it provides for the coordination of such resources. As a result, no single agency is responsible for maintaining and cultivating the infrastructure but rather there exists a shared burden among all the agencies. This sense of shared responsibility requires coordination among the agencies so that resources can be most efficiently allocated.
However, such a structure can also create substantial gaps in the funding landscape where varying priorities and needs for a given agency can sometimes mean that no agency is willing to provide the support needed to maintain the infrastructure. This can have a particularly detrimental effect on investments in innovation in infrastructure and tool development. It can also lead to critical needs falling through the cracks, because each agency has other functions to prioritize. As a result, the only way to ensure that the infrastructure remains in top shape and provides the newest and most up-to-date equipment is if the agencies coordinate their efforts and/or if there is centralized financial support for nanotechnology infrastructure.
BARRIER: UNACCOUNTED INFRASTRUCTURE DEPRECIATION COSTS
Through interviews, the committee also found a general lack of capital depreciation accounting practices (possibly limited by the funding mechanisms), which obscures the true cost to maintain, replace, and upgrade equipment within facilities, along with insufficient support for tool acquisition. As noted in Chapter 1, Program Component Area (PCA) 3 accounts for only about 10 percent of the overall NNIrelated funding, and this is insufficient to support all infrastructure needs, including operating expenses, new equipment acquisition, repair and upgrade of existing equipment, staff training and support, and other infrastructure needs. For instance, when asked how facilities acquire new instrumentation, even federally supported institutions of higher education rely on internal funding such as donated equipment funds, internal endowment monies, or faculty startup packages, to maintain their equipment. Within national laboratories, similar creativity is required to maintain the tool set.
While support for equipment acquisition is critical to the performance of the nanotechnology infrastructure, less focus has been given to the amortization of equipment and maintenance of the aging infrastructure. It has been estimated that the costs to maintain a tool are approximately 10 to 20 percent of the tools acquisition cost annually. This is a significant burden that cannot always be recovered from the user base without substantial increases in access fees. Such increases would disincentivize the use of the infrastructure for underrepresented groups, small companies, and non-R1 institutional usage. Similarly, issues of tool amortization and rapid technology development (early tool obsolescence) are not typically factored into the costs of capital acquisitions. Better planning for the amortization
and maintenance of the tool set is critical to improving the effectiveness and impact of the overall facilities.
Finding 2.8: Given a levelized amortization of 10 years, approximately 10 percent of the total value of equipment would be needed annually to simply keep pace with the existing infrastructure, much less cover the typically higher cost of next-generation capabilities.
Recommendation 2.3: Any assessment of maintaining the nanotechnology infrastructure should be informed by the depreciated cost and accumulated devaluation of capital equipment, and this data should inform future infrastructure investments made by National Nanotechnology Initiative–supporting agencies.
This is a priority recommendation.
Recommendation 2.4: Within the next 2 years, the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office should undertake a study to determine the level of resources needed to maintain state-of-the-art nanotechnology infrastructure. The study should include a timeframe, measures of success and efficiency, and accountability measures.
The additional impact of expenses that are not supported by federal funding is that many facilities, faced with tightening budgets, choose to forego “optional” expenses such as continued staff training and equipment service contracts. This leads to difficult decisions on the part of the facility management on how to prioritize their activities. While saving money in the short term, these can have significant impacts on longer-term expenses such as increased unexpected and emergency expenses, increased equipment downtime, and difficulties supporting emerging or nontraditional projects.
While in some cases, agencies can make funds available for new capital purchases, the amounts available are insufficient to address all the capital needs. Furthermore, not all the infrastructure needs are for new capital equipment. It is critical to maintain and support the “work horse” equipment, but at the same time, it is necessary to develop the next-generation tool set to maintain global leadership. Both of these efforts require substantial resources but are often not competitive in these programs. Chapter 3 includes a section on opportunities to expand relationships with industry, including the semiconductor industry, as a means for accelerating innovation into practical outcomes.
Experts noted to the committee that some funding agencies have started making aspects of tool management a required part of the proposal and tool acquisition
process. For instance, the NSF-Major Research Instrumentation program and NIH Cryo-EM acquisition programs are two such examples of programs in which plans for the effective management and support for the tool throughout its lifetime have to be considered from the start.
BARRIER: INSUFFICIENT SUPPORT FOR STAFF
In addition to infrastructure funding for equipment, the committee noted that there is insufficient support for human capital infrastructure, particularly support for the training and education of a multidisciplinary workforce. As with the equipment funds, these types of efforts tend to fall in between funding agencies if there is not sufficient coordination and prioritization of the needs at the facilities. This situation has been somewhat exacerbated as new requirements for education, workforce development, and diversification of users have been included in many new calls for nanotechnology infrastructure, although no new resources have been added for these activities. While PCA 4 captures education and workforce development activities of the NNI, these typically focus on general education and workforce, not specifically the workforce that supports the facilities and users. Companies that are developing advanced technologies, such as microelectronics and quantum, cite lack of hands-on experience as a top challenge in hiring qualified workers.4 There exists an opportunity for the NNI to better focus efforts on workforce development within core facilities to ensure that users and researchers are able to get the most out of the national infrastructure and remain at the leading edge of innovation in equipment and technique development.
Similarly, there is a great deal of non-uniformity in the support provided to institutions to maintain and operate U.S. infrastructure. In the realm of higher education, some institutions receive directed federal funding such as NNCI support, Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers support, CHIPS and Science Act funding, or other large federal grants to operate facilities, while others with similar needs are left to seek internal institutional support or restrict operations to maintain the necessary equipment and staffing.
The issues of inequality in funding become increasingly apparent when looking at the typical user base at large federally funded facilities. Support for access to the infrastructure is welcome and appropriate, especially support for users who come from other institutions, particularly smaller, non-R1, institutes of higher education or small and mid-size companies and startups, to cover related expenses such as travel or housing. According to the committee’s interviews, this creates a substantial
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4 Quantum Economic Development Consortium, 2023, “Guide to Building a Quantum Technician Workforce,” October, https://quantumconsortium.org/workforce23.
barrier to users from underrepresented institutions and regions. More on this topic is discussed in Chapter 4.
The committee agrees with the following finding from the 2016 review of the NNI:
Finding 2.9: There is a clear lack of identified funds for the development of new leading-edge instrumentation or recapitalization of commercial tools at NNIsponsored user facilities, with the exception of CNST. As a result, there is a real risk of obsolescence of the physical and computation infrastructure available to the nanoscience and technology research enterprise, and a corresponding decrease in the user value.5
Recommendation 2.5: Federal agencies that support nanotechnology infrastructure should, within 2 years, offer infrastructure funding that includes mechanisms to provide professional staff support.
While the barriers and challenges listed above provide an overview of the issues faced by U.S. infrastructure, these issues are ones that are within the control of the United States to mitigate. None of these issues are based on fundamental limitations of the U.S. nanotechnology ecosystem, nor are they based on international issues such as access to equipment or supply chains.
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5 National Research Council, 2016, Triennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, The National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/18271.
