We operate two evaporation setups in our laboratories. Both setups were manufactured by Angstrom Engineering. Both deposition setups are used for the fabrication of organic light-emitting diodes and organic photovoltaic cells. The setup ran in the laboratory located in Overman Hall 026 consists of 10 sources. 8 sources are special for organic compounds, Radak sources. 4 of the Radak sources are low-temperature point sources, capable of heating the materials up to 600ºC, The other 4 organic sources are high-temperature sources with a maximum recommended temperature is 1,200 º C. The presence of 4 banks of radak sources allows us to fabricate complicated architectures of up to 4 co-deposited organic materials. The other two sources are resistive, mostly used for inorganic compounds. The overall setup consists of three interconnected glove-boxes: one holding the evaporating chamber, the second is dedicated to wet processing and a third one for device testing. We use a brightness light distribution characteristics system by Hamamatsu, which measures both the optical and electrical properties of an OLED at the same time. Hamamatsu developed this system in collaboration with Adachi laboratory at Kyushu University. We also have a solar simulator and a Keithley 2400, integrated by PV Measurements, Inc.. Lastly, we have transient electroluminescent measurement station. This station consists of a HP 15 MHz pulse generator, a 1ns photo detector and a 5 MHz double channel digital oscilloscope. The second setup is located in the room 418 in the Physical sciences building laboratories building. This setup consists of two evaporation chambers. One chamber with a cryopump, two sputtering sources (one RF and one DC) and two resistive sources is used for inorganic materials. This chamber is connected to a second load chamber with 4 Radak sources. Two sources are for high-temperature and independent shutters and two for low-temperature. Theses sources allow for the co-deposition of two layers components in 4 possible combinations. This load lock chamber is connected to the inorganic chamber and also to a glovebox where the finalized devices are stored or prepared for transportation to the testing facility.
As we are moving toward micro- and nano-photonic devices, we realized we need tools that would allow observing/imaging the devices, materials and features on relatively small scale. We have acquired an Olympus FluoView 1000 confocal microscope equipped with a lifetime-imaging (FLIM) and with fast-correlation spectroscopy (FCS) modules by Picoquant. We also count with a Dimension EDGE atomic force microscope (AFM) from Bruker-nano (formerly VEECO). This AFM possesses contact and non-contact methods that can be utilized in conductive, surface potential, tapping, electrostatic force and tunneling effect measurements. Fine surface characterization of thickness can be determined by profilometery (KLA Tencor)or ellipsometry.
Novel materials created by the group can be purified using thermal gradient sublimation using one of several furnaces with ultra high vacuum through the use of turbomolecular pumps. These new materials often lead to new applications and modifiable testing schemes. A Dimatix Materials Printer DMP-2800 is used in printing materials in a vast array of outputs from surface coatings to reactive arrays. The piezoelectric inkjet technology and MEMS fabrication processes allows the deposition of fluidic materials in user defined patterns with a resolution up to 5080dpi.
The Group owns and operates the following resources located in our laboratories (418, 517, 520, 122 Physical science building and 026 Overman Hall): time-correlated single photon counting fluorimeter (Edinburgh) for recording steady state and time-resolved spectra. The combination of the three lamps allows accessing lifetime 100 ps - 10 s. The solid-state steady-state luminescence is measured using the integrating sphere (Labsphere) connected to an Andor spectrometer and camera by an optical fiber and laser diode excitation sources. This allows us recording room-temperature luminescence from triplet emitters. Fluorescence-based micro-imaging is performed using fluorescence microscope (Dialux, Leitz) with color CCD camera (Pixera). UV-vis spectra are recorded using double-beam (HITACHI) or diode-array (HP) spectrometers. The DFT calculations are carried out on three dedicated PC workstations and Dell PowerEdge III server. We also own an electrochemistry setup with electrochemical quartz-crystal microbalance (EQCM).
For our more recent biosensing experiments, then group counts with a Pherestar microplate reader with four photomultiplier tubes for optimized measuring of fluorescence intensity & polarization as well as time-resolved fluorescence, luminescence and absorbance in UV/Vis. The BioRAPTR workstation is used for automated non-contact dispensing of multiple reagents in up to 3456-well plates across a volume range of 100 nL - 60 µL . Mosquito for precise nanoliter down to 25nL pipetting irrespective of liquid viscosity or environmental conditions in microarrays. The KODAK Image Station 4000 mm PRO system is used for the sensitive and quantitative imaging of chemiluminescent, UV and multi-wavelength fluorescent, chromogenic and radioisotopic labels in gels, blots, and plates with tunable excitation, emission and, 20 μm resolution.
The Department of Chemistry and the Center for Photochemical Sciences also operate Bruker 500 MHz spectrometer with cryo-probe, Varian Unity-plus 400 MHz NMR equipped with pulsed-field gradients, indirect multinuclear detection, CP-MAS, and high stability temperature control; Bruker Avance 300 MHz NMR spectrometer; Shimadzu GC-MS; variety of FTIR's; Bruker-Daltonics MALDI-TOF; ESI-MS spectrometer, AVIV CD spectrometer; several UV-Vis spectrophotometers (HP, Hitachi, Varian); Edinburgh Instruments FL/FS 900 steady-state and time-correlated single photon counting fluorimeter equipped with temperature control (Neslab RTE-111 circulator) and 2 Glan Thompson polarizers; PTI pulsed nitrogen/dye laser combination used for transient luminescence measurements; 6W argon ion laser (Coherent); femtosecond Ti:Sapphire laser (Coherent) and frequency doubler (Inrad); Janus ST-100 LN2 cryostat with temperature controller; conventional time-resolved absorption experiment using Nd:YAG (Continuum)/OPO (Opotek) excitation; ultrafast transient absorption apparatus based on a Ti:Sapphire/Regenerative Amplifier/OPA system (Spectra-Physics) with single wavelength and spectrograph detectors; step-scan nanosecond time-resolved IR spectrometer (Bruker) using a Nd:YAG/OPO laser system (Spectra-Physics) as the pumping source, independent of that used for nanosecond transient absorption measurements.
