University of Groningen joins ARCNL partnership

The University of Groningen (RUG) joined the ARCNL public-private partnership as associate partner on January 1st, 2022. Since the start of ARCNL in 2014, the University of Groningen has been involved in ARCNL’s research program with their professor Ronnie Hoekstra as part-time group member of the EUV Plasma Processes group. Recently, Hoekstra’s activities at ARCNL have spun-out in a separate research group, named Ion Interactions. ARCNL director Joost Frenken says: “We are grateful for the continued inspiration and research contribution to ARCNL from Hoekstra and his team and are happy that the University of Groningen is now prominently recognized for these contributions.” Other ARCNL partners are the University of Amsterdam, VU University Amsterdam, the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and ASML.

Having the University of Groningen as associate partner is advantageous to ARCNL for numerous reasons. One of them is access to the Ion Beam LEIF Unit in Groningen. The ZERNIKELEIF setup there is a unique low-energy ion beam facility, at which (multiply) charged tin ion beams can be produced, selected on energy, charge state, and mass. The addition of the University of Groningen to the ARCNL partnership introduces new opportunities for collaboration and knowledge exchange with colleagues in a wider circle of complementary research fields.

To celebrate the partnership, on June 22nd about 40 researchers from ARCNL visited the labs of the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials, and we had a great day with scientific talks and dinner in the city for boosting the interactions.