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This facility is equipped for the metallographic preparation of specimens by producing strain-free surfaces usually examined by optical microscopy. Other applications of mechanically polished specimens involve producing strain-fee (surface) tensile specimens, optically flat electrodes, and flat substrates for subsequent thin-film depositions. Both transmitted light and reflected light metallographs are available for photomicrography and microstructural characterizations. The Lab Manager is available for consultation and training.

The Penn State Nanofabrication Facility (Nanofab) is a fully staffed user research facility that enables fabrication and characterization of a wide range of devices to support fundamental and applied research in diverse fields spanning electronics to medicine. Over 400 researchers from Penn State, other universities, government labs, and industry take advantage of the expertise and world-class facilities of The Nanofabrication Laboratory. The Facility has cross disciplinary expertise in the areas of spectroscopy, biology, chemistry, physics, optics, electrical engineering, and engineering science.

The Nanofab provides specialized instruments and technical support in areas that mirror our faculty research strengths, including chemical and molecular-scale nanotechnology; electronics, optics, and MEMS; materials and physical sciences; and education. The technical staff have made significant progress in transitioning nanoscale materials synthesis, chemical and molecular film patterning and deposition, complex ferroelectric oxide thin film deposition, and device fabrication processes from leading PSU research centers and faculty labs to the open-access user facility.

For users, the Nanofab provides the opportunity to do hands on research with some of the world's most sophisticated instruments for the fabrication and characterization of materials at the micro and nanoscale.

Instrumentation:
Deposition and Growth
https://www.mri.psu.edu/nanofabrication-lab/capabilities/deposition-and-...

Etching
https://www.mri.psu.edu/nanofabrication-lab/capabilities/etching-0

Characterization
https://www.mri.psu.edu/nanofabrication-lab/capabilities/characterization-0

Lithography
https://www.mri.psu.edu/nanofabrication-lab/capabilities/lithography-0

The OIM consists of a Philips XL40 FEGSEM, equipped with a large specimen chamber and a Peltier cooled CCD camera for acquisition of electron backscattering patterns. The camera mount has also been upgraded to a stepper motor driven screw drive, allowing the camera position to be controlled to meet the diffraction requirements of the experiment. Recently, provisions for fitting a hot stage to run in-situ annealing and orientation data acquisition experiments have been implemented, and have been preliminarily successful. Data collection is provided by commercial OIM software acquired from TSL, and runs on a windows PC workstation. The OIM is part of the Earl and Mary Roberts Materials Characterization Laboratory that houses the department's X-ray and microscopy facilities. The MCL also contains a classroom from which students can remotely control the microscopes.

The MRSEC computational facilities are part of the Brandeis High Performance Computational Cluster (HPCC). HPCC is comprised of approximately 155 computational nodes each of which has 8 or 12 cores ranging in clock speed from 2.50 GHz to 3.16 GHz. In addition, 5 nodes of the cluster are connected to 12 NVIDIA GPUs. HPCC has about 36 TB of storage. The cluster uses customized Rocks cluster software with 64-bit Linux. The MRSEC has priority ownership of 23 of the nodes, and low priority access to the remaining nodes.

The microfluidic facility has been completed. Work included renovation of the room, purchase of a Leica motorized fluorescent microscope with Metamorph control and analysis station, and acquisition of pumping equipment. A station for measurements of surface tensions at liquid-liquid interfaces has been designed and built. The microfluidics facility now includes equipment dedicated to characterization and operation of microfluidic channels and networks. This will include equipment for measuring fluid viscosities, liquid/liquid and liquid/surface interfacial energies, as well as set-ups for pressure-driven fluid pumping. Quantitative fluorescence optical measurements of millisecond kinetics on microfluidic chips are possible with a high-numerical aperture compound microscope. A fluorescent stereomicroscope for slower sub-second kinetics, and for evaluation of protein assays developed in IRG 4 is also available.

The UMass Electron Microscopy Center is a part of the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) and the Silvio O. Conte National Center for Polymer Research at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. It is equipped with several transmission electron microscopes, scanning electron microscopes and related sample preparation equipment for the use of the UMass community as well as people from outside the University. The mission of the Keck Electron Microscopy Laboratory is to provide access to material characterization equipment, technical support, training and consultation, as well as to perform a range of services for users in the area of electron microscopy. The laboratory capabilities include high-resolution imaging of materials structure, compositional analysis, analysis of crystallographic and electronic structure, etc.

This NU-MRSEC funded facility provides testing equipment for studying the mechanical behavior of materials. We have the capability of conducting tension, compression, fatigue, creep, stress rupture, impact, and 3 or 4-point bend tests. Additional equipment is also available to perform tests in controlled atmospheres, vacuum, and cover the temperature range of 77.2°K to 1773°K.

The computer-interfaced MTS machines can perform static and dynamic mechanical tests that relate an applied force to the elastic, anelastic, and/or plastic deformation of solid materials. The facility also makes available investigation of strain or stress controlled fatigue experiments, fatigue crack initiation studies, fatigue crack propagation studies, cyclic hardening, cyclic softening and cyclic stress-stain curve measurements under computer control.

The Crystal Growth shared experimental facility in CMSE is a unique resource available to users within and outside of MIT community. We have optical floating-zone furnaces, top-seeded growth furnaces, 3-zone tube furnace, box furnaces, arc melting furnace and cutting/polishing equipments to satisfy the needs of crystal growth. Facilities for characterization of crystals include SQUID magnetometers and ICP-AES. The project can be arranged as a contract to work or trained researchers to become qualified facility users.

The Meyer Hall 425 Thin Film Deposition Lab contains a clean room and main area with thin film deposition equipment, fume hoods, and various equipment for optical and electronic characterization of films and devices.

The Materials Preparation and Measurement Laboratory (MPML) provides facilities for preparation, fabrication, processing, patterning and characterization of many types of samples. Instrumentation encompasses scanning probe microscopes (AFM and STM), scanning electron microscopes (SEM), optical lithography and imaging, sample cutting-polishing, surface coating, thermal characterization, optical characterization via steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence, absorbance, reflectance, Raman, and light scattering.

Training and Access

A key aspect of the lab is extensive one-on-one training with experienced PhD-level staff. After extensive training that covers operational procedures and safety training, it is possible for all users, from undergrads, graduate students, and postdocs, to REU summer students and external users of all levels, to operate instruments by themselves. Qualified users are given 24/7 access to the instruments. MPML staff may also provide direct service on an as-needed basis.

Recharge Rates

Recharge recovery is necessary to partially cover service contracts and equipment repairs. Most instruments are recharged based upon hours of use. Evaporators, RIE and Spin Coaters are recharged per use. We have simple flat rates for both internal and external users. However, precious metals (Gold, Platinum, Palladium and etc.) and most consumable supplies should be provided by research groups.

Recharges based on hours of use

Internal Users: $70.00/hr (training and use with assistance); $30/hr (use without assistance)
External Users: $111.30/hr (training and use with assistance); $47.70/hr (use without assistance)

Recharges for Evaporators, RIE and Spin Coater

Internal Users: $70.00 for training; $70/use (with assistance); $30.00/use (without assistance)
External Users: $111.30 for training; $111.30/use (with assistance); $47.70/use (without assistance)