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The Center for Nanoscale Material provides researchers with a powerful combination of scientific resources for materials characterization at the nanoscale.

We provide a wide range of capabilities and expertise to help elucidate structural, structure-property and functional information from nanoscale particles, assemblies, devices and systems. The methods span numerous aspects of magnetic/electrical measurements, metrology, microscopy, spectroscopy, quantum science and wear/friction measurements. Instruments range from those commonly found in research laboratories, such as scanning electron microscopy and powder diffraction, to specialized and unique capabilities such as Ultrafast Electron Microscopy, the Hard X-Ray Nanoprobe and Synchrotron X Ray Scanning Tunneling Microscopy at the Advanced Photon Source, and the Quantum Matter and Devices Lab for hybrid quantum science at ultralow temperatures.

Tools and Capabilities

Note some capabilities listed below are hyperlinked for more information. More hyperlinks will be available soon. Capabilities that are available for remote operation are indicated with an asterisk (*).

Calorimetry/Thermal Analysis
  • Isothermal Titration Calorimeter (ITC)
  • Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), Mettler Toledo 823
  • Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), Mettler Toledo 851
Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry
  • Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry
  • Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry
Electrochemical Characterization
  • Pine Research Rotating Disc Electrode
Magnetic/Electrical
  • Electrical Characterization

    • Associated High-Sensitivity Test Systems
    • Keithley 4200-SCS/F Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer
    • Pine Research Rotating Disc Electrode
  • Magnetometry

    • Quantum Design MPMS-XL
    • Quantum Design PPMS-9
Metrology – Cleanroom
  • Filmetrics f40 Thin Film Analyzer*
  • Four Point Probe
  • Three-Dimensional Contact Profilometer: Dektak 8
  • Tencor P7 Profilers
Microscopy
  • Magneto-Optical Microscopy (MOM)
  • Raman Microscopy and Mapping
  • Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM)

    • FEI Quanta 400F (E)SEM*
    • Hitachi S-4700-II SEM*
    • VEGA 3 SEM in Cleanroom
    • Zeiss 1540XB FIB-SEM
    • Zeiss NVision FIB-SEM*
    • JEOL 7500 (FE)SEM*
  • Electron Microscopy Data Analysis

    • Image Processing and Segmentation
    • Image Simulation with High-Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM) and Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy (STEM)
    • Diffraction Pattern Simulation
    • X-ray Energy-Dispersive Spectroscopy (XEDS) Analysis (including spectrum images)
    • Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (EELS) Analysis (including spectrum images or energy-filtered TEM spectrum images)
  • Electron Microscopy Specimen Preparation Resources (not focused ion beam (FIB)

    • Cutting from Bulk, Grinding/Polishing, Dimpling, Ion Milling*, Vacuum Coating with Gold or Carbon
  • Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM)

    • Bruker FastScan Ambient AFM (Fastscan AFM, in cleanroom)*
    • Bruker Veeco MultiMode 8 Ambient AFM (Multimode AFM)
    • Omicron Ultrahigh Vacuum (UHV) Variable Temperature (VT) STM/AFM (VT-STM/AFM)*
    • Omicron UVH VT STM/AFM with optical access (Laser VT-STM/AFM)*
    • Omicron UHV Low Temperature (LT) STM/AFM with 6T Magnetic Field (LT-6T-STM/AFM)
    • Createc UHV LT Multimode STM (LT-STM)*
    • SPM Tip Etching
  • Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM)

    • ACAT: Argonne Chromatic Aberration-Corrected TEM*
    • Talos F200X (S)TEM*
    • Field Emission TEM (JEOL JEM-2100F)*
    • FEI Tecnai F20ST (S)TEM*
    • PI-95 In-situ TEM Picoindenter (for nanomechanical and nanotribological measurements)
  • Ultrafast Electron Microscopy (UEM)*
Spectroscopy
  • Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR)

    • Continuous Wave
    • Pulsed
  • Optical Characterization

    • Agilent Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES)
    • Circular Dichroism
    • Dynamic Light Scattering, Zeta Sizer
    • Luminescence, Perkin-Elmer LS 55
    • Laser Confocal Microscopes: Keyence 3D* and OLS4100
    • Laser Scanning Interferometric Microscopy
    • Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR): Thermo Fisher/Nicolet and Bruker Vertex 70 Spectrometers
    • Optical Microscope, Olympus MX-61
    • Optical Microscope, Zeiss Auto Imager Z1 M Upright*
    • Photoluminescence (UV, vis, near-IR, mid-IR) and Excitation Scanning
    • Raman, Renishaw in Via
    • Spectroelectrochemistry
    • UVISEL Spectroscopic Ellipsometer, Horiba Jobin Yvon
    • UV-Vis-NIR Spectrometers, Perkin-Elmer Lambda 950 and Cary 5000
  • Photon Correlation /Anti-bunching Studies

    • Single-chromophore Characterizations
    • g(2) Photon Correlation
  • Time-Resolved Spectroscopy (Transient Absorption, Emission, and THz)

    • Transient Absorption with Tunable Pump (B115)
    • Transient Absorption and Streak Camera with Tunable Pump (B117)
    • Transient THz Transmission with Tunable Pump (B119)
    • Time-Resolved Emission (Time-correlated Single-Photon Counting, streak camera, and microscopy)
    • Transient Spectroelectrochemistry
X-Ray Techniques
  • Hard X-Ray Nanoprobe, Advanced Photon Source (APS) Sector 26*

    • Multimodal Chemical and Structural Nanoimaging
    • Scanning Nanodiffraction and Bragg Ptychography
  • Rheo-XPCS, APS Sector 8
  • X-Ray Diffractometers: Bruker D2 Phaser and Bruker D8 Discover
Ultralow Temperature/Strong Magnetic Field Measurements
Wear/Friction Measurements (Superlubricity)
  • Multifunctional Tribometer with Controlled Environments*
  • Sonotek Ultrasonic Spray Coating System for Nanomaterials
Computational Tools for Nanoscience
  • Carbon, High-Performance Computing Cluster (2600 cores, 30 GPUs, ~30 teraflops)
  • BLAST, a machine-learning-based toolkit for developing force fields from data sets, including optimization and validation protocols
  • FANTASTX, machine learning/artificial intelligence framework to determine atomistic-level structures from multi-modal experimental and theoretical data