Mission Statement
The Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials (GLAM) is an independent laboratory that supports and fosters interdisciplinary
education and research on advanced materials in science and engineering. GLAM’s educational goals include undergraduate,
graduate and postdoctoral students.

Founded September 1, 1999, the Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials (GLAM) is an Independent Laboratory that reports to the Dean of Research. The Laboratory supports the research activities of more than 20 faculty members from the departments of Applied Physics, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Electrical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Physics. The multidisciplinary foundations of faculty, students, and research provide a dynamic academic environment for a broad spectrum of scientific research areas including high temperature superconducting materials and devices, mesoscopic devices, magnetic recording and storage media materials, electronic materials, opto-electronic materials, nanoscale materials and phenomena, nanoprobe devices, highly correlated electronic systems, computational materials science, condensed matter theory and physics, polymeric and biological materials, crystal growth, and thin film synthesis of complex oxides.

GLAM also has a newly remodeled Stanford Nanocharacterization Laboratory which provides advanced materials characterization and synthesis facilities for its members as well as for the Stanford materials research community at large. The instruments include a focused ion beam (FIB), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), scanning probe microscopy (SPM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), x-ray diffraction analysis (XRD), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) for characterization and thin film deposition capabilities for synthesis of materials. These facilities are managed by professional staff who also conduct research and development of new tools and techniques in areas related to advanced materials synthesis and characterization. GLAM is also home to the Center for Probing the Nanoscale, a nanoscale science and engineering center sponsored by the National Science Foundation, and to the Stanford Center for Magnetic Nanotechnology, as well as a Chevron-Stanford Program on Diamondoid Nanotechnology. GLAM also maintains a strong link to the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES), a DOE funded national laboratory program through the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

The Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials is housed in the Gordon and Betty Moore Materials Research Building and the McCullough (Jack A.) Building complex.

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Brief history of GLAM
M. Beasley and A. Fetter

In the late 1980s, Stanford's materials physics faculty came together both to build a community and to seek a center of activity for this diverse group. Also of concern was the need to preserve the shared materials facilities that were located in the McCullough Building under the management of the NSF Center for Materials Research that started in the 1960s. The Dean of Research formed a committee chaired by A. Bienenstock to assess this possibility from the perspective of the broader materials science community at Stanford. The committee recommended formation of a new laboratory.

Although Stanford clearly appreciated the importance of these activities, the central question was how to proceed. A significant boost for this program arose through an NSF request for proposals (around 1990) for building renovations to facilitate materials research. In response to Stanford's proposal to renovate the McCullough building, the NSF made a grant of $2 M. At the same time, two other independent sources of additional funds became available: (1) the Stanford Board of Trustees increased the pay-out from endowment for capital purposes and (2) later the Moore gift for a Materials Research Building.

A small group worked on a proposal to the Provost (M. Beasley, A. Fetter, T. Geballe, T. Gur, and A. Kapitulnik) that was submitted in 1992. Much of the planning involved what is known as "programming", namely constructing a detailed list of faculty that wanted to be part of the new laboratory (as the discussions progressed, a significant group of faculty "voted with their feet", seeking on their own initiative to join the new lab).

Fortunately, W. Hewlett and D. Packard indicated a willingness to support a new Science and Engineering Quadrangle (SEQ), and the vision of a new Laboratory for Advanced Materials became part of this proposed SEQ. The plan included a renovation of the McCullough building, downgrading it to offices and measurement labs, along with a new high-tech Gordon and Betty Moore Materials Research Building for advanced materials synthesis. Together, the McCullough building and the Moore building would form a new "Laboratory for Advanced Materials" (LAM)

The new laboratory LAM opened in 1999, as an Independent Laboratory reporting to the Dean of Research, with A. Fetter as its first director (1999-2002). Subsequently, the laboratory was renamed the Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials (GLAM), in honor of T. H. Geballe, who came from Bell Laboratories in the late 1960s and established a broad program in advanced materials at Stanford.
GLAM has provided a remarkably stimulating and effective environment for faculty and students from departments in science (principally Applied Physics and Physics) and engineering (principally Materials Science and Engineering). Especially notable are the many new young faculty who work together, writing proposals and research papers and sharing students and equipment. A crucial part of GLAM is the new Stanford Nanocharacterization Laboratory developed under the leadership of R. Sinclair that replaced the original CMR Facilities. It contains several major shared facilities (FIB, SEM, TEM, etc.), funded in part by major donations from Craig Barrett (Intel) and Morris Chang (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company).

Subsequent GLAM Directors have been A. Bienenstock (2002-2003), M. Beasley (2003-2005), Z.-X. Shen (2005-2008) and Paul McIntyre (2008-present). One major new development has been the increasingly close coupling between GLAM and the x-ray and materials activities at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). This interaction will benefit both GLAM and SLAC, especially when the new Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES) activity at SLAC matures.