Harvard-MIT Center Gets $3M

A multi-million dollar Defense Department grant awarded last year to Harvard and MIT will make Cambridge New England's foremost center for research on surface materials, scientists said this week.

Research on surface materials is on the cutting edge of technology and has broad civilian and defense-related applications, experts said. It is one of the most active research fields at Harvard, professors said.

Under its University Research Initiative (URI), the Department of Defense (DOD) granted $3 million to the two schools last June for the purchase and upkeep of four pieces of electronic detection equipment, members of the Harvard Physics and Chemistry Departments said.

The sophisticated equipment will augment currently available Harvard facilities, officials said.

"This will be the only such facility in New England," said Paul C. Martin '52 dean of the division of applied sciences.

Understanding the structure of surfaces and interfaces "is relevant to the knowledge one needs to develop a cutting edge in modern technology," said Henry Ehrenreich, Clowes professor of science and director of the materials research lab.

Professor of Chemistry George M. Whitesides, who is chairman of the chemistry department, applied for the grant with MIT chemistry professor Mark S. Wrighton last year. Whitesides anticipates that the equipment will be operating by next fall.

"This is a very substantial investment," Whitesides said. Whitesides called the grant a "vote of confidence by the Department of Defense" that materials research going on in the Cambridge area is worthy of a high investment.

"A typical research grant is something like one-tenth of this," Whitesides said.

The grant will provide Harvard's research labs with two sophisticated instruments, a Rutherford-Bach. scattering instrument and an X-rayphoto-electron spectrometer. An Auger spectrometerand a secondary ion mass spectrometer, twoinstruments which are particularly useful toelectronics research, will be set up at MIT.

Administered by the government's DefenseAdvanced Research Projects Agency, the nationwideURI program is "designed to strengthen the abilityof universities to conduct research and educatescientists and engineers in 10 technologiesimportant to national defense," DOD officialssaid.

URI will have awarded $110 million dollars to70 universities by the end of 1987 in chunks of$170,000 to $3 million, DOD officials said. said.

According to Whitesides, the grant did notstipulate that Harvard report on their research tothe Department of Defense. "It's a typicalresearch grant" in terms of contract, he said.

DOD officials could not be reached for commentyesterday.

The research will be "a general contribution tothe United States and to materials research atthis University," Whitesides said. Discoveries inthe fields of electronic systems and high strengthmaterials could prove beneficial for defensepurposes too, he added.

The research is also important to "thenon-defense sector," said Whitesides. He hopesthat in the distant future the equipment will leadto applications in "corrosion, inhibition andcohesion" of surfaces