Tools & Techniques
Specifically, the development of this research group is part not only of a St Andrews strategy to establish an extremely strong soft condensed matter effort, but also forms part of a wider pan Scottish (SUPA) initiative. St Andrews alone has invested heavily in infrastructure to support this effort. In 2008, this year St Andrews has invested ca. £1.2 M of SRIF funds to build new research labs for both hard and soft condensed matter research, including our new laboratory, which has been fully refurbished and equipped for performing the synthesis of nanocolloids and includes two new fume hoods and a specialist glove box.
In parallel, for reasons ranging from "personal philosophy, interest and past experience" to a natural need for young research groups aiming at tackling new challenges with original angles, we are also working closely with the Mechanical & Electronics workshops at the development of tools and instruments.
We are a fairly young research group and obviously may not possess "in-house" the instruments and accessories that can part of older and well established research groups...
It is however noticeable that St Andrews is a highly collaborative University so that access to any of the facilities on campus, either departmental or in research groups, is never an issue. At the top of this we have full access to the facilities in other Scottish Universities via EaStChem for instance.
This lab has also to be seen in the context of the University resources which include
- Optical and Electron Spectroscopy
- Vibrational spectroscopy (HREELS)
- X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS)
- Raman Spectroscopy
- Time-Resolved Optical Spectroscopy
- Angle Resolved Photo-Emission Spectroscopy (ARPES)
- Low-temperature Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM)
- THz & Non-Linear Optics
- Microscopy
- Scanning probe microscopes (variable temperature UHV-STM, electrochemical STM and liquid phase AFM/STM)
- Electron Microscopy (High resolution TEM and SEM instruments combined with composition analysis of nanostructural materials)
- FTIR instruments
- Magnetic Spectroscopy
- NMR (Solution and solid-state spectrometers)
- High Field ESR
- Very Low Temperature & Very High Magnetic Field for magnetic properties and superconductivity investigations
- Composition and Structure Characterisation
- X-ray crystallography
- Mass spectrometry (EI/CI, electrospray, FAB, MALDI, ES MS/MS)
- Electrochemistry
- TGA, DTA, DSC, gas chromatography (GC, GCMS), ...
- Fabrication and Manipulation
- Clean rooms
- Micro-fluidics and optoelectronic devices
- E-beam and photolithography facilities
- Glove-boxes
- Organic and metal evaporators
- Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and solar cells fabrication and characterisation facilities
- Fuel cells
- Optical Tweezers
- General Facilities
- Excellent Research Computing Facility
- Analytical and Characterisation Services
- Mechanical & Electronic workshops