[2] CNRS and the university announced this collaboration in 2013, with the goal of uniting two existing laboratories of Ile-de-France: the Institute for Fundamental Electronics (Institut d'Electronique Fondamentale, IEF) and the Laboratory for Photonics Nanostructures (Laboratoire de Photonique et de Nanostructures, LPN).

[4] It is located on the Paris-Saclay campus in Palaiseau, 20 miles south of Paris, France.

[2] According to the European Union's MIR-Bose project, "The Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (C2N) is one of the largest laboratories of University Paris-Sud with 283 members including 83 permanent researchers, 160 PhD students and post-doctoral researchers and 40 technical and administrative staff members.

It has four main divisions: The C2N is one of three major French centers of research on nanotechnology (the other two are in Grenoble and Toulouse.

)[3] Several other related research groups are located near Paris-Saclay, including Thales, and STMicroelectronics.