Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources
Chemistry:
UTEP is in a period of rapid and sustained growth that has seen the university's size double and research funding more than quadruple in the past 10 years. A state-of-the-art 140,000 ft2 Chemistry and Computer Science Building was inaugurated on March, 2012, in which all of the proposed chemistry research will take place. In this new building, Prof. Echegoyen will occupy 3,700 ft2 of laboratory space; Prof. Noveron will occupy 1,400 ft2 of laboratory space. The labs of the four chemistry PREM participants contain all the standard, necessary synthetic equipment.
(Dr. Echegoyen) Two Krätschmer-Hoffman arc reactors to prepare fullerenes, 3 electrochemical potentiostat/galvanostats, one equipped with an Electrochemical Quartz Crystal Microbalance (EQCM), a Mettler-Toledo TGA/DSC, a Bruker MALDI-MS, a UV-Vis Cary 5000 spectrophotometer, and 3 HPLCs, all equipped with automatic samplers. One HPLC is a DiChrom Recycling system, essential for difficult-to-separate compounds. They also have all the necessary HPLC columns for effective fullerene separations, including Buckyclutcher, Buckyprep, Buckyprep-M, and COSMOSIL 5PBB and 5PYE. Several MBraun products available include a dry box and a solvent purification system along with a thermal evaporation system. Finally, a National Renewable Energy Laboratory-certified AM1.5G solar simulator from PET, and a Bentham quantum efficiency analyzer have recently been installed. (Irwin) Thin film deposition and analysis facilities include three Laurell spin-coaters, three Jelight UV-ozone reactors, an RIE reactor, two thermal evaporations systems (one inorganic and one small molecule), Ecopia temperature-controlled Hall Effect probe, and a NT-MDT scanning probe microscope with all essential electrical and magnetic capabilities. The thermal evaporators and one spin-coater will be contained in a three-glove box thin film deposition system from MBraun. (Dr. Noverón) Dynamic Light Scattering P2000.
Physics:
(Dr. Baruah) Linux cluster of 26 dual-core nodes which is equivalent to a 104-processor available for the PREM program. This cluster is exclusively used by Baruah and her group. The code development and testing of the methods will be mostly carried out on this cluster. Baruah also has a grant from the NSF-teragrid resources at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at University of Texas at Austin for 450,000 cpu hours for the year 2011-2012. She also has another grant of 200,000 cpu hours at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) maintained by Department of Energy for the year 2011. Data generation will be carried out at the High Performance Computing resources and the post processing analysis will be done at the local clusters or computers.
Dr. Chunqiang Li has set up a Biophotonics Laboratory in the Physics Department of UTEP. Several major equipments have been purchased such as two femtosecond Ti/sapphire lasers (Spectra-Physics, Maitai-HP, 100 fs, 700-1100 nm, 80 MHz, 3W; Spectra-Physics Solstice ACE, 35 fs, 800 nm, 5kHz, 6W), a parametric optical oscillator (Spectra-Physics, Inspire) a wavelength extender (Newport Corp. SCG-02, 500-700 nm), three 4’×8’ optical benches, automatic translational stages, power meters, spectrometers, and photodetectors. Li has purchased two EMCCD cameras (Andor iXon 897) and one spatial light modulator (Holoeye, PLUTO-NIR-010). These equipment will be available to conduct the proposed work. Li has designed and constructed a fast laser scanning (30-120 frames/s) two-photon microscope for imaging. This microscope uses the femtosecond Ti/sapphire laser as the light source. We have obtained preliminary data with this microscope. Two personal computers (Dell Optiplex 7100 MT) are used to automatically collect the image from this microscope.The facilities within UTEP are well equipped to accommodate and successfully implement the proposed research on two-photon microscope. There is a designated laboratory, room 130 in the Physical Science Building (PSCI) at UTEP, to conduct this research project. This room has more 1500 sq. ft. of space, and is air conditioned with filter to reduce the dust in order to meet the requirement of hosting femtosecond lasers.
Mechanical Engineering:
(Dr. Ramana) His Materials Laboratory is part of 11,000 sq. ft. integrated High Bay Combustion, Propulsion and Materials Laboratory at UTEP. This recently renovated facility includes several bay areas where the all the needs for advanced instrumentation are provided in bay areas. Materials laboratory occupies six bay areas, which are stand alone in terms of power, water, processing gases etc. Facilities and resources in Ramana’s laboratory relevant to the project include sputter-deposition chamber and pulsed-laser deposition (PLD) systems to fabricate W-Ti-O thin films. Characterization facilities, such as XRD, SEM and XPS, are fully available to perform the crystal structure, phase, and chemical and morphology analyses of W-Ti-O films. Instruments to perform electrical and optical property measurements are also available.
(Dr. Yirong Lin) His research laboratory is housed in Engineering E211 as part of the Columbia-Challenger Materials Laboratory in the Mechanical Engineering Department. The lab is equipped with numerous material synthesis equipment such as customized hydrothermal reactor, Bath Sonicator (Branson 2510), Horn Sonicator (Branson Sonifier 450), Centrifuge (Eppendorf 5810). In addition, several materials processing equipment such as muffle furnace (Lindberg Blue BF 51748C), tube furnace (Thermal Scientific Lindberg Blue M Mini-Mite Tube Furnace) and vacuum oven (Lindberg blue) are available. Lastly, materials testing facilities focusing on mechanical and electrical properties such as load fram (Instron 8801 fatigue test machine, 100KN capacity), nano-indentation system (Hysitron TI750 Ubi Nanomechanical Test System, up to 10mN normal force and test temperature 400 °C), and battery/super capacitor characterization facility (MTI 8 channel battery tester) are currently available.
Electrical Engineering:
The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) has made monumental contributions in the expansion of its research capacity and its doctoral programs, including recent significant investments in state-of-the-art equipment, laboratories and buildings. These efforts have earned UTEP the designation as one of the state’s “Emerging Tier One” universities by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. UTEP centers and laboratories focus on a broad array of research, including Nanotechnology, Materials and Metallurgy, Energy and Sustainability, Environmental, and Biomedical and Health areas including drug development, tissue engineering, and prosthetics. UTEP recently celebrated the grand opening of its new $4.5 million dollar Nanotechnology Research Facility. This center was made possible by contributions from UTEP, the Texas Instruments Foundation and the University of Texas System. The new Nanotechnology Research Facility houses a 6,000 square foot, class-100 cleanroom with major research instrumentation for materials and device fabrication and characterization. Research areas include nanoscale aspects of matter and the application of nanotechnology to create novel materials and devices. Fabrication processes supported include lithography, thermal processing, thin film deposition and etching.
Deposition and characterization equipment that will be used in the research collaboration include:
Thin Film Deposition and Thermal Processing Equipment
· Kurt J. Lesker PVD75 – RF and DC Sputtering for thin film deposition of up to several materials sequentially, without breaking vacuum.
· PVD75 Thermal Evaporation – coat samples with various materials.
· Laurell Spin Coater – for accurate dispensing and uniform thicknesses of liquid solutions.
· MTI 1200°C Rapid Thermal Processor (RTP) for rapid heating of a sample.
Characterization and Device Measurement Equipment
· Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) – for high resolution imaging.
· X-ray Diffraction (XRD) for chemical composition, crystallographic, and microstructure analysis.
· PV Measurements Solar Cell I-V Measurements Systems IV5.
· Keithley source meter, ± 2 V or ± 20 V, and ± 1 ?A to ± 1 A.
· Class ABA Solar Simulator with 5 cm x 5 cm beam and AM1.5 spectral filtering.
· Solar Cell Quantum Efficiency Measurement System QEXL.
· Thermo Scientific DXR SmartRaman Spectrometer for Raman measurements.
· Carey 5000 UV-VIS Spectrophotometer for optical transmission and absorption measurements.
· Signatone Four-point Probe for sheet resistivity measurements.
· Dektak 150 Surface Profilometer for thickness measurements.
· Ecopia HMS Hall Measurement system for conductivity and mobility measurements.
Other Resources:
UTEP has a machine shop, an electronics shop, and a Class-100/1000 clean room (to be completed December, 2011) available for use. General UTEP instrumentation available includes, but is not limited to: 600 MHz and 300 MHz NMRs, X-Ray single crystal diffractometer for chemical analysis, and XPS, AFM, SEM, HR-TEM, GI-XRD, and profilometry for thin film analysis.Other equipment in the Keck Center includes 10 fused deposition modeling systems; two 3D printers (ZCorp and Objet); one multi-jet modeling machine; one selective laser sintering machine; two electron beam melting metals system; eight commercial stereolithography systems; four custom stereolithography-based systems including two patented technologies (U.S. Patent 7,556,490 and 7,658,603), one bio-stereolithography system in which a commercial SL system has been retrofitted to operate within a laminar flow hood, and one dynamic mask-projection microstereolithography system; one off-set roll-to-roll printer; two microdispensing 3D printing systems; and one Dimatix inkjet printer. All participants have multiple computers available to them in their offices and laboratories as well as office space for faculty as well as participating students.