The Nanoscale Characterization Facility (NCF) is housed on the ground floor in Simon Hall, our multidisciplinary sciences building, and has 2000 square feet of laboratory space and 1300 square feet of clean room space. The NCF will provide faculty, staff, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate and undergraduate students with state-of-the-art instrumentation for generating and characterizing materials having features with nanometer dimensions. We expect the NCF to grow over the next three to five years as a university resource, and the instrumentation within the facility will be available to all research groups at IU.

In the NCF, we presently have a scanning electron microscope (Zeiss SMT 1430) with a nanopattern generation system (Nabity NPGS) for imaging and electron beam lithography. An atomic force microscope (Asylum Research MFP3D) interfaced with a laser scanning confocal microscope (Nikon TE2000-U) provides simultaneous surface probe and optical characterization. Thin metal films can be deposited with a four-source thermal evaporator (Linde Auto 306 Vacuum Coating System). A 300-kV cryogenic transmission electron microscope (cryo-TEM, JEOL JEM-2200FS) is currently being installed in the facility, and a field-emission scanning electron microscope (FEI Quanta 600 FEG) has recently been ordered.

Location: SI 034

Visit the NCF website