To help UC Davis researchers build and explore materials with architectures as small as one billionth of a meter -- a fifth the size of a human hair -- the W.M. Keck Foundation has granted the College of Engineering $600,000 for special equipment. Subhash H. Risbud, professor and director of the Materials Research Center at UC Davis, and Bruce C. Gates, professor in the chemical engineering and materials science department, will use the Keck funds to purchase a new solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer to help them understand the fundamentals of minute objects called "nanoclusters." Already used on a large scale as industrial catalysts, converting chemicals without creating polluting byproducts, nanoclusters may one day influence the development of technologies ranging from portable lasers to supercomputers. "Nanoclusters are new kinds of materials that are neither fish nor fowl. They have structures and properties in between those of molecules and bulk solids," says Gates.