Headquarters Agreement for the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory

The setting-up of the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL) is the result of a decision taken at the 21st Portugal-Spain Summit held in Évora on 18 and 19 November 2005, with the two governments having agreed on the creation of an international research and development institution in the field of nanotechnologies and nanosciences, based in Braga, and initially jointly run by both countries, and envisaged to spread to other countries at the appropriate time.

The 23rd Luso-Spanish Summit held in Badajoz, 24 and 25 November 2006, marked the signing of the Statutes of the Laboratory, by the Prime Minister of Portugal and President of the Government of Spain. The Statutes (text in Portuguese, Spanish and English) followed the usual procedure for international treaties during 2007, including their parliamentary approval in both countries and ratification by the President of the Portuguese Republic (text in Portuguese) and the King of Spain.

In the meanwhile intensive activity has taken place, of note being:

• The organisation of the meeting which was held in February 2007 at the premises of the Installing Committee do INL, involving participants (text in Portuguese) representing 14 of the main nanoscience and nanotechnology laboratories from Portugal and Spain, and the coordinators of the Spanish Nanotechnology Network and the Portuguese Nanotechnology Network, and representatives from the Ministries of both countries, where several laboratories were described and possible forms of collaboration and synergy with the INL were discussed.
• The Portuguese associates of the Installing Committee were the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, via Decree-Law No. 66/2007, of 19 March (text in Portuguese), Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) and The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), and on the Spanish side, the Ministry of Education and Science, represented by its Secretary General’s Office for Scientific and Technological Policies.
• The nomination of the governing body of the Installing Committee (President of the General Assembly – Luis Magalhães, President of UMIC; Secretary of the General Assembly – Francisco Marcellán, Secretary General for Science and Technology Policy; President of the Administrative Board – José Rivas, Senior Professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela; Executive Director (and part of the Administrative Board) – Carlos Bernardo, Senior Professor at the University of Minho and President of the Associate Laboratory “I3N – Nanostructures, nanomodelling and Nanomanufacturing Institute"; Voting Member on the Administrative Board: Paulo Freitas, Senior Professor at IST-Lisbon and President of the "Nanotechnologies Institute” Associated Laboratory.
• The commissioning of two BoD – Basis of Design – Studies for the premises of the future INL campus following invitations for tenders addressed to three internationally-renowned enterprises in nanotechnology laboratory projects.
• The intense interaction with the two companies selected in the course of the development work of the Preliminary Studies.
• The preparation work undertaken with the IBM Corporation in a Memorandum of Understanding (Press Release concerning the INL-IBM MoU (text in Portuguese)) in order to identify joint research projects for possible future collaboration.
• The joint organization, under the Portuguese Presidency of the EU, of the High Level Conference on Nanotechnologies, by The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), the Science and Technology Foundation (FCT), the Installation Committee of the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL) and the Directorates General for Research, Technology and Development and the Information Society and Media of the European Commission. The conference was held in Braga on 20th -21st November and participants included the Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education of Portugal and the Spanish Minister for Education and Science, the European Commissioners for Science and Research and the Information Society and Media, as well as leading lights from science, industry and S&T policy in the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Conference participants were given, among other things, a brochure entitled the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL) – An international community for nanotechnology. The day before the conference there were Meetings of 9 Committees and Councils of Several EU Programmes in Braga, mostly on topics related to nanotechnology. One of these was the Meeting of the National ICT Research Directors Forum of the European Union which joined together the Director-Generals responsible for Information and Communication Technologies in the 27 Member States of the EU and the external countries that are associates in the EU Research Framework Programme.
• The Meeting of the International Scientific Council of the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, on 3 December 2007, to evaluate the activities of the INL facility.
• The preparation of a second phase of the functioning programme in nanosciences and nanotechnologies, to reinforce the cooperation between Portugal and Spain, with the support of the INL, and to increase the number of R&D projects approved after international evaluation of the proposals presented to the open call (text in Portuguese) launched in November 2006 by Portugal’s Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) and the Spanish Dirección General de Investigación in the areas of (a) Nanomedicine – Diagnostic Systems, (b) Nanomedicine – Therapeutic Applications and Controlled Release of Drugs, (c) Nanotechnologies for Environmental Control, and (d) Nanotechnologies for Food Safety and Quality (10 projects approved selected from a total of 72 applications received); the awarding of PhD scholarships for advanced training in Portuguese and Spanish research units (15 scholarships awarded for training in a similar number of research units and preparations to open a future applications procedure for additional scholarships), and Post-Doctoral work to be carried out in laboratories highlighted within the international context and in areas of particular interest to the INL.
• Selection of the Preliminary Study adopted for the Basis of Design for the project and the construction work to be carried out.

Besides the signing of the Headquarters Agreement for the INL with the Portuguese State, the ceremony had two key moments: the unveiling of the plaque next to a large standing stone to mark the foundation of the INL and the presentation of the model (View from the North West) and (View from the South West) of the architectural basis of design.

The large standing stone mark is a schist-greywacke rock and was extracted from one of the rock masses to be found on the border between Portugal and Spain. They represent the first rocks deposited some 500 million years in the ocean that formed when the various continental blocks, which led later on to the formation of Europe, had begun to individualize.

Unveiling of the plaque that marks the founding of the INL with a nanometric inscription containing the abbreviation "INL”
next to a large standing stone that marks the INL foundation
(from left to right: Luis Magalhaes and José Rivas, respectively, Chairman of the General Assembly and President of the
Board of Directors of the Installation Committee for the INL; José Luis Zapatero, President of the Government of Spain;
José Socrates, Prime Minister of Portugal; José Mariano Gago, Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education of
Portugal (back view); the CEO of Solicel, the company with the Pedreiras do Poio quarry, in Foz Côa, which offered the
large standing stone; Rui Dias, Professor of Geology and Director of the Research Laboratory for Industrial and Ornamental
Rocks of the University of Évora who suggested the stone and selected the large standing stone).
Photo by Ricardo Oliveira, PM Office.

Presentation of the model of the INL facilities
(from left to right: Mesquita Machado, Mayor of Braga; José Mariano Gago, Minister of Science, Technology and Higher
Education of Portugal; Mercedes Cabrera Calvo-Sotelo, Spanish Minister of Education and Science; José Socrates, Prime
Minister; José Luis Zapatero, President of the Government of Spain; José Rivas, President of the Board of Directors of the
Installation Committee for the INL).
Photo by Ricardo Oliveira, PM Office.

The plaque supports a silicon wafer with the nanometric inscription "INL” (see figure obtained with an Atomic Force Microscope) on a silicon wafer 1 by 2 centimetres, made by controlled deposition of a metal from a fine needle of an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), an instrument invented in 1986 by Binnig (Nobel Prize for Physics in 1986), Quate and Gerber, who made a decisive contribution to the study of the world at the nanoscale level. In this technique, a very fine needle (tip) sweeps a surface, tracing its profile with a resolution which can be at an atomic level. By applying electrical impulses to this point it is possible to transfer atoms from its metal coating to a silicon surface, thus "writing" a pattern. In this case, the INL inscription occupies an area 500nm to 350nm, and has a thickness of around 2nm. It has the same size relation to the small silicon plaque where it is written, that the head of a pin has to a football field. This deposition technique was developed simultaneously and independently in Portugal (Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon) and Spain (Institute of Microelectronics of Madrid - Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas) and it is expected that it will be useful in the development of nanodevices.

INL Large Standing Stone Mark – Witness from the Past Points to Beyond the Future (text in Portuguese)>>
Video referring to the development of the INL’s installing project >>
Speech of the Minister for Science, Technology and Higher Education (text in Portuguese)>>