Missouri State University Labs

The Missouri State University (my old haunting ground) have several pieces of equipment that are extremely handy in producing the samples I need for my implanted polymer research. They also have some characterisation equipment that helps them out in optimising sample production. All of this is now associated with the Center for Applied Science and Engineering, and will be moved from their present location to the Center's new location sometime in mid 2007.

Sample Production Facilities

Here is the fabrication equipment that is available for materials deposition and/or modification and for device production. The nice thing about this equipment is that its previous life was in a semiconductor production facility (mostly IBM), so that experience with industry equipment is available.

50 kilovolt ion implanter

The beast in the picture above is one of the old IBM Taconic ion implanters. It is with this piece of equipment that the non-equilibrium, non-reversible modification of materials takes place.

Plasma etcher

Here's an item that uses the same physical process as ion implantation. This device cleans the surface of objects by using energetic ions.

IBM thermal evaporator with RF sputter coater	Polymer evaporator	E-beam evaporator

The above images, though not very exciting, show some necessary equipment for thin film production. The first is an old IBM thermal coater that has been modified to sputter coat objects as well. This sputter coater can deposit insulative and high melting point materials onto substrates. The next one is a system dedicated to thermal deposition of polymers. Last, but not least, is a electron beam evaporator. This one uses an electron beam to evaporate the materials to be deposited.

Characterisation Facilities

Below are some pictures of the characterisation equipment available at CASE.

Atomic force microscope

This device uses the force between the atoms of the probe and that of the sample to measure the topography of an object.

Scanning electron microscope

This is one of your bare bones SEM with low vacuum capabilities (~ 2 Torr). Operating in low vacuum mode allows it to image non-conductive samples (semiconductive and insulating) without putting a thin conductive coating on them.

Low temperature electrical workstation

This piece of equipment can measure the electrical properties of a material from room temperature (300 K) down to liquid helium temperatures (4 K). This system is highly configurable and it is equipped with a superconducting magnet that can be used to measure the magnetic dependance of the electrical properties as well as the Hall effect.