In everyday life generating and measuring temperature is straightforward, but in the quantum world, which reflects the behaviour of atoms, controlling the temperature is extremely more challenging. At very cold temperatures (cf. -269°C or near zero on the Kelvin temperature scale), as atoms are frozen, we can 'see' unique phenomena that would otherwise be masked by the thermal motion of atoms. As, complex materials are more likely to uncover their quantum properties at cold sample environments, low temperature refrigeration is an essential requirement.

The nanochemistry facility entails exploitation of elaborate colloidal chemistry approaches (ambient and high-temperature) to harness nanoscale size and shape-guiding mechanisms that afford various kinds of functional nanocrystals (single-phase, core@shell, anisotropic, hybrid particles) with tunable response (semiconducting, metallic, magnetic etc). Multidimensional nanostructures, such as cluster-like nanoarchitectures or periodic nanoparticle superlattices could also be realized by exploiting our know-how on directed assembly methods in liquid media.