Submitting Your Proposal
- Please carefully review the 2DCC scope and facility capabilities (which will evolve over time as new equipment comes on-line)
- You are encouraged to contact an advocate from the user support group to discuss your ideas before preparing your proposal.
- Submit your proposal
The 2DCC accepts two types of proposals:
- Research projects: These proposals describe synthetic, characterization and/or theory efforts that are performed either by 2DCC staff (off-site user) or by users who come to the facility (on-site user).
- Research project proposals are reviewed by an external user proposal review committee, which makes recommendations to the 2DCC executive leadership team.
- For content of the proposal and further details of the review process, refer to the Proposal Process documentation.
- Requests for standard samples or data requests: Sample request proposals for standard samples that are routinely synthesized at the 2DCC or data request proposals for access to growth recipes, characterization and/or simulation data, etc. resulting from 2DCC in-house research efforts.
Current Available Thin-Film Sample Currently Available Bulk Samples- Sample and data requests are reviewed by an external user proposal review committee which makes recommendations to the 2DCC executive leadership team.
- For content of the proposal and further details of the review process, refer to the Proposal Process documentation.
Proposals of all types carry no user fees for academic and government users, so long as the work is non-proprietary (i.e., published in the scientific literature and not kept confidential for commercial reasons). Industrial users are charged a fee based on cost-recovery (e.g., materials and supplies, personnel time, equipment maintenance, etc).
If you have further questions about the 2DCC scope or capabilities, we encourage you to contact a member of a user support group prior to submitting your proposal. Note that significant expertise in synthesis, characterization, and theory/simulation is available from 2DCC-affiliated faculty: user research project proposals can integrate this expertise into their submission, and resources are available to support integration of 2DCC-affiliate expertise into user activities. Training users in synthesis is part of our mission, and a “sliding scale” of on-site oversight and mentoring is integrated into the user experience.
As a community of 2D synthesis researchers, our shared goal in accepting user proposals is to generate a broad range of the most scientifically compelling proposals, encouraging and facilitating high-quality submissions from a diverse user base.
When Your Proposal Is Approved…
If your proposal is recommended for support, an advocate from the user support group will contact you to develop the implementation details of your experiment, including the logistics and timeline of access to facilities, the integration of 2DCC-affiliate faculty or staff in support of the project, and a mandatory safety review.
For those traveling, a campus map, directions, and information on local hotels are provided for your convenience. Onsite users are responsible for their own living expenses and travel costs. However, the 2DCC has limited travel funds available for users from minority serving and predominantly undergraduate institutions. See the proposal submission portal for further information. The 2DCC is committed to established safety protocols for its on-site users, therefore, online safety training is available for on-site users and is required before using the facility.
Agreements between the user’s institution and Penn State University are executed before the commencement of projects. Sample-only requests are covered by a Materials Transfer Agreement and research projects are covered by standard agreements. Users should read and understand the 2DCC user policies and procedures before their project begins.
Project Outputs…
The 2DCC mission, as underlined by the National Science Foundation, seeks to foster a strong community of synthesis professionals with a culture of shared knowledge and technique – as such, all synthetic protocols (and supporting characterization and simulation methodology) developed with 2DCC resources (i.e., non-proprietary work that is free from user fees) will be documented in full detail and made available as described in the data management policy.
Users must acknowledge the 2DCC in publications derived from 2DCC resources, and are expected to provide the 2DCC with DOI links to such publications upon their appearance in the scientific literature. Publications that do not include a 2DCC acknowledgement will not be considered in assessing user productivity in follow-up proposals from that user, unless an erratum is published to correct the oversight.
Co-authorship of publications resulting from user projects is governed by accepted scientific practices, and may include 2DCC-affiliated faculty or staff scientists when such individuals make substantive contributions towards fundamental discovery, data analysis, or novel samples.
Users are required to submit a yearly project report and a final project report within 30 days of completion of their project. Users are strongly encouraged to complete an online user survey to assist in assessing and improving the user experience, either during their project or immediately after project completion. Details for project reporting and surveys can be referenced in the user policies and procedures documentation.