FACILITIES AND EQUIPMENT

Following is the list of equipment and facilities that are currently available at Speclab, University of Puerto Rico (UPR) for executing the proposed research.

  • Film growth using chemical solution deposition (CSD), chemical vapor deposition (CVD), two Pulse Laser Deposition (PLD) systems (one equipped with in-situ reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) guns), Plasma Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) system, and an RF/DC/AC magnetron sputtering system;
  • Programmable furnaces for up to 1700o C, hydraulic press and pellet dies;
  • Two high energy ball mills and one micronizing mill grinder for powder processing and pellet fabrication;
  • Hydrostatic high pressure (up to 70 tons) system for target fabrication from pellets;
  • Rapid Thermal Processing system for temperatures up to 1300o C;
  • Photolithography system for patterning electrodes in a clean room with resolution of ~10 microns;
  • Wire bonder for depositing metal (gold, aluminum) electrodes;
  • Calorimetric systems (DTA/DSC/TGA) from Shimadzu Corp.;
  • Dry Glove box with Argon atmosphere;
  • Optical film thickness monitor, ellipsometer, and profilometer for measuring film thickness and optical constants;
  • Two triple Raman Microprobe Systems (#T64000) equipped with CCD/PMT and UV/VIS/NIR capabilities, and a Spex Double Grating Raman Spectrometer (#1401), all from Horiba, Inc.; Several Argon ion, and He-Cd lasers as excitation sources covering UV/VIS/ (244 nm – 530 nm) regions from Coherent Lasers, Inc.; Closed cycle 4He cryo-systems, Raman furnace for high temperature (1500K), and a power supply for electric field induced Raman studies; Diamond anvil cell for high pressure Raman scattering studies; Raman imaging system and several optical microscopes;
  • X-Ray Diffractometer, Rigaku Ultima III equipped with thin film measurement and high temperature accessories and XRF for samples compositional determination;
  • FTIR Spectrometer PE 2000 (15000 – 200 cm-1) and UV-VIS-NIR Lambda 2 Spectrometer from Perkin Elmer, Inc.;
  • Impedance bridges from Agilent Technology and Novocontrol, for measuring dielectric properties (10 µHz – 40 GHz), ferroelectric properties (50 Hz – 1 MHz) from Radiant Technologies, I-V characteristics, from Keithley, all in the temperature range of 77K to 770K;
  • Equipment for measuring polarization hysteresis (RTA 6000) from Radiant Technology;
  • Vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) for magnetization measurements with temperature range (77K – 900K) and magnetic field up to 2T;
  • Physical Property Measurement System (PPMS) for electrical, magnetic and calorimetric measurements with closed cycle He liquefier from Quantum Design, Inc.;
  • Solar simulator, SUN 3000, from ABET technologies for photovoltaic measurements;
  • AFM/PFM/MFM system from Veeco Instruments (now Bruker Inc.) for thin film surface characterization;
  • Multichannel Solartron and Arbin battery testers for determining the battery performance;
  • Potentiostat – Galvanostat systems from Gamry Instruments, Inc., for cyclic voltometry and charge – discharge studies and also for in-situ impedance spectroscopy of electro-mechanical cells