This facility consists of a Nanoscope III operating station, a Dimension 3100 scanning probe microscope on an air lifted isolation table, and a Multimode scanning probe microscope, all of which are from Digital Instruments/VEECO. This is a shared facility funded by an NSF Major Research Instrumentation award (PI: Tang). It is used extensively for studies of nanoscale materials and devices, and in particular biological materials. Additional functionalities have been added to an existing AFM facility previously funded by the NSF major instrumentation grant. The additional instruments include a Bioscope BIO2-N Precision stage, an inverted fluorescence microscope with a TIRF lens, and an ORCA-285 regular Fluorescence Camera. These added components allow for simultaneous imaging of live cells by AFM and fluorescence microscopy, as well as direct probe of cell mechanics and cell adhesion. The facility will benefit all participants of the Seed, or other investigators of similar interest. Only properly trained persons are allowed to use the facility. All new users must be trained by the facility manager (currently Dr. Guanglai Li). A cost recovery mechanism has not been established.

The Electron Microscopy Cluster provides a variety of electron and optical microscopes for sample preparation, imaging small features and for microanalysis of the elemental composition of materials. The facility is operated by expert managers who have many years of combined experience in advanced microscopy. The CCMR facilities are run by expert staff who provide training and technical assistance. We welcome outside users from both industry and academia.

The Cleanroom and Processing Lab is located in Hill Hall along with the Synthesis Lab and Chemical Vapor Deposition Lab. The labs constitute a unique, co-located exploratory materials synthesis, deposition, and processing capabilities. The Cleanroom is Class 1000 with photolithographic tools for substrates up to 3" (76 mm) diameter and features down to 2 um. It has an adjacent Class 10000 Processing Lab with processing equipment for making electronic devices. The lab supports our PHGN/CHEN435 and CHEN/PHGN/MLGN535 Interdisciplinary Microelectronics Processing Laboratory class and support laboratory research.

Computer Integrated Systems for Microscopy and Manipulation (CISMM) offers custom 3D force microscopy systems; electron, fluorescence and atomic force microscopes; nanoparticle synthesis; and facilities for graphics and virtual reality display.

http://cismm.cs.unc.edu/

Research in soft condensed matter is concerned with materials whose basic units consist of many atoms or molecules. Examples include complex fluids such as biological and synthetic polymers, emulsions, liquid crystals, and colloids (aka nanoparticles), as well as gels and granular materials. There is also a close connection between biology and soft condensed matter physics. The constituents of living tissues – protein, DNA, cells and cellular membranes – are complex fluids. Biological systems also provide a rich setting for exploring many fundamental issues in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. Research at the CSMR focuses on a broad spectrum of fundamental problems in soft condensed matter and biological physics. These include the the glass transition & jamming, self-replication, self-assembly, protein folding, and the statistical mechanics of driven dissipative systems far from equilibrium.

The Atom Probe Tomography Laboratory is an associated facility of the Renewable Energy MRSEC at the Colorado School of Mines directed by Professor Brian Gorman. The laboratory has two advanced atom probe systems, both acquired through a recent NSF MRI development grant led by Professor Brian Gorman. The atom probes are being used to investigate materials atom by atom to speed deployment of advanced materials processing, and a new dynamic atom probe is under development that will be able to integrate atomic spatial and chemical resolution measurements with sub-ns temporal resolution for monitoring diffusion, phase transformations, and crystallization processes.

The facility consists of portable high-speed video equipment to be signed out by MRSEC members. Due to the extremely high demand for high-speed imaging, this facility has recently been augmented by the purchase of 4 new cameras to supplement the two instruments that were available previously (a Kodak Motion Corder video camera and a Vision Research Phantom v7.0). The new cameras include a pair of Vision Research Phantom v7.3-turbo cameras that allow the reconstruction of 3-dimensional motion and structures, a Phantom v9.1 for increased resolution (at slower frame rates) useful for the high-speed X-ray imaging applications, and a color Phantom v7.1. The purchase of these cameras was leveraged through MRSEC and other University support.

This facility has been extensively used in outreach activities as well as in research. For example, the high speed video is used to film the events at the annual "Physics with a Bang!" lectures so that the audience can see the surprising phenomena involved in explosions, fracture and fluid behavior that occurs too rapidly to be observed by the human eye.

In response to the need for x-ray imaging and tomography capabilities at our MRSEC we have developed a new mobile facility centered around a C-arm x-ray system. The heart of this facility is a state-of-the-art OrthoScan HD mini C-arm that uses a flat panel x-ray detector to allow for video rate imaging. The resolution is 2,000 x 1,500 pixels and the field of view can be as large as 6”x5”. The C-arm configuration means that source and detector are mounted at the ends of a c-shaped brace that can be rotated manually in two orthogonal directions as well as translated in xyz. This makes it possible to bring the unit to experiments in any of the labs of MRSEC faculty and to image components without removing them, as long as the C-arm will fit around the piece to be x-rayed (max. gap between source and detector 14”). The unit is fully computer controlled and allows for a variety of different imaging modalities. A special feature of this facility is an add-on we developed, which uses a computer controlled stepper system to rotate samples up to 6” tall and 3” wide at the center of the C-arm in order to perform tomographic imaging.

This facility maintains various magnet, cryogenic and optical systems operating either separately or together. The systems are designed to be as flexible as possible, and to allow several types of measurements to be performed over a wide range in magnetic field, temperature, and probe frequencies (including both uhf/microwave and optical). The dc and uhf/microwave frequency measurements that are routinely performed include magnetization and magnetic susceptibility, acoustic propagation, microwave absorption, electrical transport (including thermoelectric measurements). Routine optical measurements include optical absorption, photoluminescence, pump-probe studies, and Raman spectroscopy.