The Material Characterization Facility – operated within Colorado Shared Instrumentation in Nanofabrication and Characterization (COSINC) service center – recently relocated to its permanent home in the Sustainability, Energy and Environment Laboratory building on east campus.
The design for the facility started almost two years ago, with construction beginning in January and operations started in October. The characterization facility houses a range of instrumentation for a wide variety of materials characterization techniques, including field-emission scanning electron microscopy (SEM), conventional SEMs, atomic force microscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy. It also has capabilities such as energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy and electron backscatter diffraction.
The facility is now located in several suites within SEEL RM181 on the first floor, specifically designed for very low mechanical vibrations and serves over 150 users and 70 Principal investigators across campus said COSINC Director Aju Jugessur. He added that the facility also houses an FIB-SEM instrument, which in addition to in-situ imaging, can use heavy ions to perform “nano-machining.”
“This facility enables a wide variety of research projects in electronics, photonics, quantum science, energy and environment to bio-medical, pharmaceutical and nanomedicine,” Jugessur said. “It also fosters interdisciplinary research in the college and across campus.”
COSINC is a multidisciplinary core research facility and service center within the College of Engineering and Applied Science. The open facility offers a common platform for the convergence of multiple scientific and engineering disciplines and facilitates collaborative research with strategic partners and information exchange. Jugessur said the Material Characterization Facility is already creating synergies with other user facilities on east campus, including a planned COSINC cleanroom, which will better serve our CU Boulder research community and local companies.
“COSINC is also contributing to the training of the next generation of scientists and engineers by offering hands-on training opportunities for our students and researchers in material fabrication and characterization,” Jugessur said.