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NSL Welcomes Ben Conner to Staff

05/17/2018

NSL is pleased to announce a new addition to its staff. Ben Conner was hired as a Research Associate.

Ben has a bachelor's degree in Physics from Clemson University and Master's and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Florida State University. His experience is best categorized somewhere within the intersection of experimental condensed matter physics and materials science. Ben comes with a broad scientific and technical background with his most recent position as a post-doctoral researcher with the Correlated Electron Materials Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We are very pleased to have him join our NSL team.

Ben is located on the ground floor of the Physics Research Building, room 1140. His contact info is:
Office - 740-725-6368
Email – conner.289@osu.edu

NSL Welcomes Amanda Ponomarenko to Staff

08/01/2017

NSL is pleased to announce a new addition to its staff. Amanda Ponomarenko was hired to take over the administrative and customer service functions for NSL from Christine Prechtel.

Please contact Amanda if you are interested in becoming an NSL user, need BuckID access to one of NSL's labs, or if you need to purchase PPMS accessories, cantilevers, or other lab supplies. Amanda is also the point of contact for all NSL billing questions and for any problems that may occur in the labs or with the website and online reservation system.

Amanda is located at the kiosk desk on the second floor bridgeway on the south side of the Physics Research Building. Her contact info is:
Email – ponomarenko.1@osu.edu
Phone – 614-688-1158

New NSL Lab - Organic Clean Room

12/16/2013

NanoSystems Laboratory is happy to announce an expansion of its capabilities with an acquisition of additional 1,600 ft2 of class 10,000 clean room space optimized for chemistry of air sensitive organic materials. It features four interconnected glove boxes with nitrogen or argon atmosphere available.

The glove boxes contain two thin film PVD chambers. One is optimized for metal film deposition and the other for organic film deposition. The metal film deposition chamber is equipped with one e-beam, one sputter, and two thermal evaporation sources. The organic film deposition chamber is equipped with two OLED and two thermal evaporation sources.

Additional equipment available within the glove boxes includes a spin coater, a vacuum oven, freezer storage, a wiring station, and a test station for electrical measurements. The clean room also features a yellow room for substrate preparation, with a fume hood, an ultrasonic cleaner, a UV ozone cleaner, and an optical microscope. This new organic clean room is available to all users on a user fee basis upon completion of appropriate training and certification. To arrange use and training please contact Amanda Ponomarenko (ponomarenko.1@osu.edu).

New Tabletop Maskless Aligner System µPG501

8/9/2013

NanoSystems Laboratory (NSL) has added a new instrument, a Tabletop Maskless Aligner System µPG501, to the existing instrument lineup in the NSL clean room in the basement of the Physics Research Building (PRB). The purchase of the instrument was funded by OSU ENCOMM TIE funds. This new instrument, in addition to NSL’s Kurt J. Lesker sputtering/e-beam evaporation system also installed in the clean room, allows users to complete the process chain of photolithographic patterning and material deposition without leaving the clean room.

The aligner is fabricated by Heidelberg Instruments Mikrotechnik GmbH (Heidelberg, Germany). It enables photo lithography for prototyping without a need for a contact mask. Instead, the desired pattern is computer generated and subsequently projected on a photo resist coated surface using an optical projection system. The smallest achievable feature size of the instrument is 1 µm. It uses substrates up to 6” x 6” with an address grid of 50 nm x 50 nm.

The aligner is very easy to use since it is equipped with an auto focus system and a high resolution camera system for metrology and multilayer alignment. The photo resist is exposed with a high power 390 nm LED with Microchem Shipley 1805 Photoresist used in a standard process. The instrument can be used for both custom photolithographic patterning and for contact mask fabrication for subsequent use in a conventional contact mask aligner. Please contact NSL Administrative Assistant Amanda Ponomarenko (ponomarenko.1@osu.edu) to schedule training or for other questions.

Installation Underway for Physical Properties Measurement System (PPMS) cryogenic Atomic Force Microscope/Magnetic Force Microscope (AFM/MFM)

4/27/2012

At the end of April, the cryogenic Atomic Force Microscope/Magnetic Force Microscope (AFM/MFM) for the PPMS was delivered by ION-TOF GmbH. The instrument will allow scanned probe microscopy surface studies of samples in magnetic fields of up to 14 T and over the temperature range between 1.9 K and 400 K. Such a capability is unavailable on most commercial AFM/MFM. The microscope is currently undergoing installation tests and is expected to become available to users mid May 2012.

ENSL Aquires TerraHz Time Domain Spectrometer (THz-TDS)

4/13/2012

NanoSystems Laboratory (NSL) has recently acquired a new TerraHz time domain spectrometer (THz-TDS) for the study of solid state materials. The instrument has been provided by Lake Shore Cryotronics, Inc. as a part of a collaborative effort between Lake Shore Cryotronics and the OSU NSF Center for the Emergent Materials (CEM) to develop a commercial THz spectrometer. This collaboration is funded via the Ohio Third Frontier funding award. The current instrument is capable of conducting THz spectroscopy at room temperature under ambient conditions. In the future this instrument will be replaced with a prototype of low temperature THz spectrometer that is currently being developed by Lake Shore Cryotronics, Inc. The instrument is expected to arrive at ENSL in August of 2012.

Physical Properties Measurement System (PPMS) Installed; Available for Use

4/1/2012

NanoSystems Laboratory (NSL) is proud to announce that the newly acquired Physical Properties Measurement System (PPMS) by Quantum Design USA has been installed in room 0177 PRB. The instrument is operational and available to users. The system is capable of conducting resistivity, AC transport (ACT), AC magnetic susceptibility (ACMS), Vibrating Sample Magnetometry (VSM) and torque magnetometery measurements. The VSM capability of the PPMS comes with both large and small bore coil sets and a high temperature oven option with the capability for sample heating up to 1100 K. All measurements can be conducted in magnetic fields of up to 14 T and over the temperature range between 1.9 K and 400 K (1100 K if VSM oven is used). To reduce the costs of system operation, the instrument is equipped with a helium reliquifier that dramatically reduces liquid helium consumption.

The instrument has proven to be very popular with users. In order to schedule training, please contact NSL Administrative Assistant Amanda Ponomarenko at ponomarenko.1@osu.edu or via phone at (614)688-1158.

Lab-18 Sputtering System Installed and Ready for Use

3/1/2012

ENSL is excited to announce the launch of our new Kurt J. Lesker Lab-18 sputtering system! The addition of this instrument to the facility will allow users to deposit thin films of a material onto a wafer substrate up to six inches in diameter. A holder for smaller substrates is also available. The machine features three magnetron sputter heads and a six pocket e-beam evaporator in the same chamber. Two of the sputter heads are equipped with extra strength magnets for better performance with deposition of magnetic materials. Samples can be loaded through a load lock mechanism which greatly reduces system pump-down time. The machine is also equipped with an ion mill for cleaning and etching samples.

Currently we have the following available sputter targets: iron, silicon dioxide, copper, cobalt, nickel, tin, and permalloy. For the e-beam evaporator we have aluminum, gold, germanium, nickel, magnesium oxide, silver, and platinum.

The sputtering system will be available for ENSL users starting on March 1st, 2012. Instrument use will be charged at a rate of $20/hour for internal users and $40/hour for external users. Please direct technical questions about the sputtering system to NSL Research Associate Ben Conner (conner.289@osu.edu). For training requests please check the Lab-18 training contact listed here.