Transnational Scientific and Education UniFEL Center for Advanced Methods of Materials Research (UniFEL Center) was established at ITMO University in 2015. 

The center’s key activities include preparations for conducting experiments on X-ray free electron lasers, primarily as part of the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (Hamburg, Germany), as well as the generation of novel methods with high spatial, energy, and temporal resolution to obtain information about the structure and functional properties of nanoobjects.

The research is carried out under the aegis of the national scientific and educational association "Mega-Class Research Facilities," coordinated by the Kurchatov Institute national research center. 

A cooperation agreement for the implementation of the projects was signed between ITMO University and the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology (TU Bergakademie Freiberg). The center is led by Prof. Alexey Romanov (ITMO University) and Prof. Sergey Molodtsov (TU Bergakademie Freiberg), who is also the research director of XFEL.EU. The study of the structural properties of nanoobjects is performed in close cooperation with the Common-Use Center of Materials Science and Diagnostics in Advanced Technologies of the Ioffe Institute.

Research objectives

• obtain the most detailed and quantitatively accurate information about the basic physical and physico-chemical parameters and characteristics at all stages of the technological process for producing nanostructures (elemental, phase and chemical composition, parameters of the crystalline and electronic structure; geometric parameters, and defects);

• obtain data on the atomic structure, geometric shape and dimensions, elemental and phase composition and defects, as well as electronic structure of materials based on detection and analysis of signals arising from the interaction of electron and X-ray beams with nanosystems;

• investigate dynamic processes in the volume and on the surface of nanoparticles with a high temporal resolution depending on the energy of an X-ray quantum;

• manage international educational programs in the methods of materials research.