OMCS was established in October 2002 as a point of contact for those wishing to access facilities and expertise within the Department of Materials. These facilities have been augmented recently with a range of equipment under the banner BegbrokeNano.

BegbrokeNano, one of the UK TSB funded UK Micro Nano Technology (MNT) Centres of Excellence, aims to provide companies involved in MNT with unrivalled facilities for materials characterisation. By forming partnerships with leading analytical equipment manufacturers the Department of Materials at Oxford University are using the funding to provide a dedicated suite for the analysis of micro and nanoscaled structures.