Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF)

The Nodes | The ANFF Difference | Optofab Node of ANFF

Established under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF)  links 8 university-based nodes to provide researchers and industry with access to state-of-the-art fabrication facilities.

The capability provided by ANFF enables users to process hard materials (metals, composites and ceramics) and soft materials (polymers and polymer-biological moieties) and transform these into structures that have application in sensors, medical devices, nanophotonics and nanoelectronics.

The Nodes

The nodes, which are located across Australia, draw on existing infrastructure and expertise. Each offers a specific area of expertise including advanced materials, nanoelectronics and photonics and bio nano applications. Our commitment to providing a world-class user facility is underpinned by the sharing of best practice in service provision across the nodes.

The ANFF Difference

Of course, opening the doors to world-class infrastructure is only the first step. Without dedicated staff to support access, your potential breakthrough research remains just an idea. Each ANFF node has experts on hand to assist researchers, experienced in meeting user requirements and maintaining leading-edge instrumentation. In fact, over 60 technical staff positions are funded through the program.
Researchers are able to either work at the node under expert guidance, or to contract for specialised products to be fabricated at a reasonable cost.

Optofab Node of ANFF

Optofab consists of four centres of facilities and expertise based at Macquarie University, Bandwidth Foundry International, University of Sydney and the University of Adelaide with the headquarters at Macquarie University.

Optofab offers specialist dedicated staff that are on hand to provide services and technical support to users where appropriate in microprocessing and microfabrication of fibre, planar and bulk optical materials which include silica, silicon, lithium niobate and polymers. There are also a number of post-processing capabilities e.g. surface functionalisation and advanced characterisation. These techniques have been used to produce artefacts for use in telecoms, biotechnology, biomedicine, microelectronics, optical sensing, industrial processing, defence and security applications.