Analysis Research Service Center
Mission and Objectives
The Analysis Research Service Center (ARSC) spans multiple locations in the Roy F. Mitte (RFM) and Jerome C. Supple (SUPP) buildings and hosts equipment utilized to probe the structure, composition, and electrical/magnetic properties of matter. Electron and Optical Microscopy equipment allows the user to image sample features across 6 orders of magnitude to "see" and understand everything from metal\concrete castings to bacteria to nanoparticles. Various photon energies are utilized for spectroscopic interrogation from infrared to x-ray wavelengths revealing information such as bond energy, crystal structure, and stoichiometry. Scanning probe techniques allow the user to maximize spatial resolution when measuring mechanical, electrical, magnetic, and piezoelectric properties with ultra-sharp "tips". Finally, electrical/magnetic characterization measures the response of a sample to an applied field that allows determination of properties like magnetization, carrier mobility, impedance, and conductivity.
Filter Panel
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Optical Microscopy
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Electron Microscopy
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Spectroscopy
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Electrical
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Magnetic
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Scanning Probe Microscopy
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Sample Preparation
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Particle/Pore size
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RFM 1202
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RFM 1203
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RFM 2226
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Supple 171
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RFM 1236
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Laser
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X-Ray
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Cryogen
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AFM
Icon AFM incorporates the latest evolution of Bruker’s nanoscale imaging and characterization technologies on a large sample tip-scanning AFM platform.
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AFM Consumables
Please contact ARSC Staff to purchase consumables. Consumable costs are outside of the monthly project cap. Contact us at analysisrsc@txstate.edu if you have any questions.
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Allied Grinder/Polisher
The MetPrep 1x is a manual grinding/polishing/lapping station. The system uses magnetic platens to easily switch between different abrasive grit sizes, diamond lapping films, or napp cloths. Samples are typically mounted in epoxy before smoothing the exposed face. This unit is used to prepare a polished surface on a specimen prior to optical or scanning electron microscopy. In addition, we have a specialty wedge polisher jig that allows users to thin material to electron transparency for TEM analysis.
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Argon Polisher
The Leica RES102 Argon polisher is used to carefully remove dielectric, semiconductor, or metallic material from a sample destined for analysis by electron microscopy (SEM or TEM).
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Bio-Rad
The HL5500PC is a high-performance Hall Effect Measurement System. It enables measurement of resistivity, carrier concentration and mobility on a wide range of semiconductors and with minimum effort in sample preparation.
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Critical Point Dryer
Critical Point Dryer (CPD) is used for drying of biological samples such as pollen, tissue, plants, insects, as well as industrial samples, for Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) analysis. Fully automated system, ensuring reproducible and controlled processes to ensure high sample quality with every run.
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Cronus
Cronus is a shielded semiautomatic probe station that allows for an exceptional noise floor for low level voltage/current and capacitance measurements.
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Dynacool PPMS
The Quantum Design Physical Properties Measurement System (PPMS) represents a unique concept in laboratory equipment: an open architecture, variable temperature-field system, designed to perform a variety of automated measurements.
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Ellipsometer
The Ellipsometer is used to analyze thin film structural and optical properties including thickness, segregation character of multicomponent films, and complex refractive indices.
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FEI Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM)
Scanning Electron Microscopes raster a focused electron beam across the surface of a sample to generate grey scale images with resolution below what can be achieved with conventional light microscopes. Our FEI Helios 400 Dual Beam SEM is equipped with a nanomanipulator, Gallium Focused Ion Beam (FIB), Gas Injection System (GIS) for material deposition, load lock for rapid sample transfer, Electron Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) detector for elemental analysis, and can perform electron beam lithography to produce < 2nm features.
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Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR)
The Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer utilizes broadband IR radiation to probe the vibrational modes of molecule in a liquid, powder, bulk, or thin film sample.
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Hermes
Hermes mercury probe station has a specialized sample stage for probing the thin film reactance (L, C, R) of a material without a top contact.
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Hirox Digital Microscope
The Hirox Digital Microscope allows for quick and easy, calibrated, high-precision, non-contact 2D and 3D measurements of your specimens over a broad magnification range.
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Imaging Sputter Coater
The Quorum Technologies EMS150T ES is a versatile sputter coater/turbo evaporator for preparing specimens for examination by electron microscopy (EM). It is a combined system with interchangeable inserts for iridium sputter coating or carbon evaporation.
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Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS)
The Agilent 8900 is an Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS) used for high purity material and contaminant concentrations with detection limits in the parts per trillion. This particular ICP-MS has three quadrupoles that ultimately determine the mass range of analyte molecules entering the detector. The second quadrupole is a special cell where up to 4 gases can be used in collision (He) or reaction (O2, H2, etc.) mode to further separate or create specific ions of interest.
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JEOL SEM
Scanning Electron Microscopes raster a focused electron beam across the surface of a sample to generate grey scale images with resolution below what can be achieved with conventional light microscopes (20-50nm). Our JEOL 6010 SEM can operate in high or low vacuum mode to accommodate samples that outgas (e.g. biological) and is equipped with a liquid nitrogen cold stage, Cathodoluminescence (CL) Spectrometer, and Electron Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) detector for elemental analysis.
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Leica Cryo-Ultramicrotome
The Leica EM UC7 Ultramicrotome equipped with the FC7 cryo-chamber attachment gives users the ability to collect either ultra-thin room temperature or cryo-sections for observation using electron, light, or atomic force microscopy.
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Leica Cryostat
The Leica Cryostat is a semi-motorized (motorized specimen feeding), high-performance cryostat with an option for motorized sectioning. It is used to freeze and section varying human specimen material quickly.
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Leica Glass Knife Maker
The glass knife maker provides the ability to manually create glass knives used for ultramicrotomy or histology. Useful in TEM and light microscopy, strips of 25 mm wide glass are scored and broken into squares, which are then broken in half to produce two triangular knives, one with a straight, sharp edge used for sectioning. The balanced break method is used in this machine.
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Leica TXP Microscopy Sample Preparation System
The Leica TXP Microscopy Sample Preparation System is used for precise cutting and polishing of samples before ion milling or ultramicrotomy. The integrated stereomicroscope and ring LED illuminator allow for sample observation and distance measurement during preparation.
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Linear Four Point Probe
Four point electrical measurements are utilized to more accurately determine the sheet resistance of bulk samples or thin films because they can eliminate the effect of contact resistance.
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Mercury Intrusion Porosimeter
Mercury Intrusion Porosimeter (MIP) is a powerful technique utilized for the characterization of pore size distribution, pore volume and porosity of a variety of solid and powder materials. Samples analyzed by this technique are placed in a sample cell with liquid mercury surrounding the sample. Force is applied to intrude the mercury into any voids or pores within the sample bed. Larger voids and pores will fill first, at lower pressure. As the pressure behind the mercury increases, smaller and smaller pores will begin to fill.
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Nexsa XPS
X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy is primarily used to probe the bond configurations of atoms in the top 2-10 nm of a thin film specimen.
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Olympus Laser Scanning Confocal Microscope
The Olympus FV3000 laser scanning confocal microscope is designed for high-resolution confocal observation of fixed and living cells, point-detection, spectral detection that does variable bandwidth filtering, high efficiency of excitation, 3-D imaging, and time course experiments.
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Optical Microscope
The Olympus BX60M optical microscope is capable of magnifications from 5-100x. Digital image acquisition and post processing is available. Additionally, the system is capable of simple polarized light microscopy and Nomarski interference contrast microscopy. Nomarski interference contrast microscopy uses the comparison of the different optical path lengths of a sample to image otherwise invisible features. This is commonly used for imaging unstained biological samples and defects in thin semiconductor samples.
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Paraffin Embedding Center
This equipment embeds tissue samples and creates paraffin-embedded tissue blocks efficiently and without error to produce better micro-sections of desired sample/tissues. It has a 3-module design that features a Dispensing console, Thermal console, and a Cold plate console . The low work surface with integrated paraffin block de-waxer helps to speed up workflow.
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Pelco Dimpler
This equipment is used to mechanically pre-thin Transmission Electron Microscopy samples prior to Ar+ ion beam thinning to electron transparency. The tools either “flat” or “dimple” the surface(s) of a 3mm dia disc through a series of grinding and/or polishing steps.
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Raman-AFM
Raman-AFM-TERS. HORIBA's leading Raman technology is now integrated with AIST-NT’s scanning probe microscopy (SPM). The NanoRamanTM platform integrates Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) that can provide physical sample information on the nanometer scale, including topography, hardness, adhesion, friction, surface potential, electrical and piezo response (among many others), Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM), tuning fork techniques (Shear-force and Normal-force imaging modes), electrochemistry, all together with the chemical information obtained from Raman spectroscopy.
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Surface Profilometer
The DektakXT® stylus surface profiler is an advanced thin and thick film step height measurement tool.
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Talos TEM
The FEI Talos™ f200i S/TEM is a 200 kV field emission (scanning) transmission electron microscope that has been designed for fast, precise and quantitative characterization of nanomaterials; achieving atomic resolution.
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TEM Consumables
Please contact ARSC Staff to purchase consumables. Consumable costs are outside of the monthly project cap. Contact us at analysisrsc@txstate.edu if you have any questions.
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Tergeo Plasma Cleaner
The Tergeo Plasma Cleaner generates a plasma of high-purity Argon and/or Oxygen to remove hydrocarbon contamination from TEM sample rods and samples.
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Ultrasonic Disc Cutter
The ultrasonic disc cutter is used for producing 3mm diameter disks/rods of ceramic, metal, semiconductor and/or geological specimens for TEM analysis. The titanium cutting tool excursion is driven with a lead zirconium titanate (PZT) crystal at a driving frequency of 26 kHz. Boron or silicon carbide powder slurry is used as the cutting media.
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UV-Vis Spectrometer
UV-Vis Spectrometer is an instrument used to measure properties of light over visible and ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, typically used in spectroscopic analysis to identify materials.
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Vibrating Sample Magnetometer (VSM)
EZ9-HF High Field vector vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) is for the characterization of magnetic materials including powders, thin films and bulk magnetic materials.
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Wire Bonder
A thermosonic ball-wedge wire bonder is designed to interconnect wire leads to semiconductor, hybrid, or microwave devices.
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Wire-Saw
The precision endless wire saw is specially designed and equipped with a diamond wire to provide a very smooth cutting for almost all kinds of materials in the presence of an anti-corrosive cutting fluid.
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X-ray Diffractometer (XRD)
Our Rigaku SmartLab X-ray Diffractometer (XRD) is utilized to probe the crystalline structure of matter to determine thickness, composition, relaxation, strain, area uniformity, density, roughness, phase, crystalline texture, % crystallinity, and pore/grain size of both thin films and powder samples.
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X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer (XRF)
The Rigaku Supermini200 is a benchtop wavelength dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence (WDXRF) Spectrometer capable of measuring elemental concentrations (Aluminum through Uranium) present in solid, thin film, powder, and liquid specimens. Sample preparation is simple and this unit can be loaded with up to 12 samples up to 44mm diameter for batch processing.
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X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy(XPS)
X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy is primarily used to probe the bond configurations of atoms in the top 2-10 nm of a thin film specimen. Soft X-ray radiation (from Al and/or Mg sources, need both to distinguish XPS from Auger) is directed at the sample to induce emission of inner shell electrons. Measuring the characteristic kinetic energy of the emitted electrons is used to determine their binding energy and therefore what atom they came from as well as the local bonding scheme.