Dr. Aouadi's laboratory has 800 square feet of floor space and houses a sputter coater, a spectroscopic ellipsometer, a wear tester (high temperature and environmental control capabilities), an optical profilometer, and, a spectrograph, a computer workstation equipped with CASTEP (Materials studio), and a 95 square foot fume hood facility.
| Sputter Coater: The sputtering system (ATC 1500-V) from AJA International consists of a cylindrical stainless steel chamber 15" in diameter and 17" high, three 2" diameter ultra high vacuum magnetron sources, and a sample insertion load-lock. The energy and flux of the particles impinging on the substrates may be controlled using a Helmholtz coil and a bias voltage at the substrate. Additionally, a substrate heater is used to vary the deposition temperature from ambient to 800 °C. The system is fully automated using Labview software. |
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To view LabView control panel, click here (works only during experiments)
Spectroscopic Ellipsometer: The M-2000 is a state-of-the-art
ellipsometer from the J. A. Woollam Co. It measures 390 wavelengths
in the spectral range from 370 nm to 1000 nm. The ellipsometer
may be used either in-situ or ex-situ. In-situ operation is used to study
films while they are created in the sputter cham
ber.
Wear tester: It Nanovea Pin-on-Disk Tribometer operates on the following principal: a flat, pin or sphere is loaded onto the test sample with a precisely known weight.The highly stiff elastic arm insures a nearly fixed contact point and thus a stable position in the friction track. The friction coefficient is determined during the test by measuring the deflection of the elastic arm of by direct measurement of the change in torque. Wear coefficients for the pin and disk material are calculated from the volume of material lost during the test. This simple method facilitates the study of friction and wear behavior of almost every material combination with or without lubrication.
High Tempertature Wear Testing: The High Temperature Tribometer employs a removeable heating element, enabling the rotating disk to reach temperatures up to 800° C. It is used to study of high temperature self lubricating materials.
Spetrograph: The spectrograph is an Andor Shamrock 303i equipped with an Andor DU420OE CCD camera. The wavelength resolution is 0.1 nm. The spectrograph is mainly used for plasma diagnostics studies. This spectrograph is currently being set-up to be abl;e to provide Raman spectroscopy measurements.
Nanovea ST400 Non-Contact Profiler uses white light & the unique chromatic aberration technique. This technique has shown to be much better than laser techniques in measuring roughness. The high precision tool also allows acquisition speed of up to 4000Hz which is unattainable with other techniques. With accuracy in the nanometer range and a maximum measuring height range of up to 27mm, the Nanovea ST400 has the unique capability of not only be able to do very accurate roughness measurements but also can do dimensional measurements on the same instrument.
Materials Studio Software (CASTEP): CASTEP is an ab initio quantum mechanical program employing density functional theory (DFT) to simulate the properties of solids, interfaces, and surfaces for a wide range of materials classes including ceramics, semiconductors, and metals. First principle calculations allow researchers to investigate the nature and origin of the electronic, optical, and structural properties of a system without the need for any experimental input other than the atomic number of mass of the constituent atoms. CASTEP is thus well suited to research problems in solid state physics, materials science, chemistry, and chemical engineering where researchers can employ computer simulations to perform virtual experiments which can lead to tremendous savings in costly experiments and shorter developmental cycles.
Comments and questions: saouadi@physics.siu.edu
Department of Physics e-mail: physics@physics.siu.edu
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