How much does it cost to use the tools at Nanolab?
We record bookings and usage time for most of the tools at our facilities electronically. The tools each belong to a specific price category named A, B, C … F and R. These data we use to calculate how much we should charge for the use.
You can find the hourly rate for each tool in our price book.
What are the IT possibilities at DTU Nanolab?
We provide a basic IT infrastructure for all users at Nanolab. On top of this, we offer the possibility to purchase additional IT services in collaboration with the Office for IT Service (AIT). We describe the possibilities in the following brochure.
Why is the cost of Nanolab higher for commercial than external project usage?
By Danish law we must charge commercial customers at least what it costs DTU to provide a given service, this includes cost typically associated with overhead: salary to administration, cost for campus maintenance, cost for central DTU buildings etc.
For users on external projects we maintain a cost less than the cost for DTU to provide the service – here overhead costs are excluded. That means by the very nature of the cost objects involved in the two prices the academic price will always be lower than the commercial price.
Why is the pricing policy different between materials and services?
Basically materials and services are two completely different things.
Materials are certain goods where Nanolab has an inventory and depending on a user’s direct action these goods will leave the inventory. In that way Nanolab is purely acting as an intermediate storage. The value of the materials are directly documentable through the invoices for the goods.
Services on the other hand do not result in a certain commodity leaving our storage and the value of the service is not directly documentable through a sub-supplier invoice. The cost of the service depends on calculations relating various cost objects through distribution keys.
Usually funding agencies view these as completely different things as well, which means that it is fairly straightforward to claim materials cost (including in Horizon 2020 projects), whereas services can be much harder to get approved, since quite a few funding agencies view access to expensive infrastructure as an overhead expense.