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Research Facilities

In addition to the shared research facilities available at the Advanced Materials Characterization Center at Helmerich Research Center, the following list of equipment is available at the Sarin Research Group laboratory. 

 

Our research group is also an active subscriber of national user facilities for x-ray and neutron scattering studies: the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, National Synchotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center at Los Alamos National Laboratory.   

Featured Equipment

 Quadrupole Lamp Furnace

Our group has developed a next generation QLF which has been successfully tested and used to conduct in-situ high temperature X-ray diffraction and total scattering studies. The QLF uses commercially available OSRAM Xenophot HLX64635 lamps which are rated for 15V, and 150W each, and have gold coated ellipsoidal reflectors. The bulb is positioned in the reflector such that the tungsten filament is located at one focus of the ellipsoid. In the QLF, four lamps are arranged in a brass housing such that the second focus is common to all the four reflecting ellipsoidal surfaces. The temperature at the hot-spot of the furnace is controlled by using a thermocouple with a temperature controller. The QLF allows collection of scattering data up to diffraction angles of ~28°, which made Q space of 19.4Å-1 accessible using 80 KeV radiation. Adjustments to the stage mount of the QLF now allows higher Q space coverage (for improved resolution) for 67 KeV radiation, and it was possible to acquire total scattering data up to ~22Å-1 in Q space. QLF’s operational temperature range capability was verified by melting Pt (Tmelt = 1769°C), which was achieved with ~90% power input to the furnace.


Research Equipment

Characterization

  • Prob-NKB ProboStat High Temperature Electrochemical Test Fixture
  • Carl Zeiss' AxioLab A1 Mat. Modular, upright Optical Microscope for Materials Science
  • Solartron Analytical’s Modulab XM ECS - A modular electrochemical research system with the following hardware/modules: 1) XM CHAS 08, 2) XM PSTAT 1MS/s, 3) XM PSTAT AUX, 4) XM FRA 1 MHz, 5) XM BOOSTER 2A
  • SevenCompact pH meter S220
  • Oakton Con 700 Total Dissolved Solid (TDS) meter
  • LaMotte 1970-EPA Model 2020we Portable Turbidity Meter
  • Micromeritics AccuPyc 1340 pycnometer for determination of density of powders and solid sample

Processing

General Equipment

CTEAS

Software


  • CTEAS: Our research group has developed the second generation CTEAS software. Together with high temperature X-ray diffraction datasets acquired using our group’s lamp furnace, we can determine the CTE tensor of any crystalline material in the temperature range extending from room temperature to 2000°C in air, and up to 1500°C in controlled atmosphere. CTEAS software allows prediction of thermal expansion along any uvw and normal to any hkl place in the measured temperature range. 3D representation of the CTE as a thermal expansion ellipsoid allows visualization of this key material property.

  • xPDFsuite software: an end-to-end software solution for high throughput Pair Distribution Function transformation, visualization and analysis.

  • TOPAS 4.2: used for refinement of crystal structure from high resolution diffraction data sets acquired under different atmosphere conditions at various temperatures. 

  •  Jade 2010 from Materials Data Incorporated:  integrates all currently employed profile fitting techniques as well as related applications; used to determine crystalline phase composition, microstrain and for preliminary crystal structure analysis from a High Temperature XRD dataset.  

  • PDF-2 from International Centre for Diffraction Data:  together with Jade 10, used for rapid and accurate phase identification.

  • Inorganic Crystal Structure Database:  database of inorganic and related structures produced cooperatively by FIZ Karlsruhe and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD.

  • Avizo 3D: an advanced 3D analysis for exploring and understanding materials structures and properties, in a wide range of materials science research areas and for many types of materials (porous media, metals and alloys, fibrous materials, composites, etc.)

  • ACerS-NIST Phase Equilibria Diagrams Version 3.4.0 (Standard Reference Database 31): used for identifying stable compositions; helps reduce research time and avoid costly experimentation by identifying temperature range for the studies.

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