Facilities

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering advances critical areas of high technology – from integrated circuits and chip carriers to turbine engines and optical waveguides – in modern research facilities, both on the University of Arizona campus and off-site.

Arizona Materials Laboratory

The AML, located at 4715 E. Fort Lowell Road in midtown Tucson, is the home of world-class materials research in glass materials, novel materials chemistry, advanced ceramics and composites, and more. 

For directions to the AML, see this interactive map.

Specialized Equipment

MSE laboratories offer the following research capabilities:

• Carbon Nanoscience Facility
  • Ultra-high-vacuum chemical vapor deposition, or CVD, and molecular deposition tool.
• Computational Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory
  • Abinitio quantum chemical simulation with VASP and path-integral molecular dynamics code.
  • Atomistic simulation tools, including molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulators DL_Poly and Lammps.
  • Finite element and finite difference time domain simulators.
  • Multiscale-multiphysics suite of codes.
• Glass Processing and Characterization Facility
  • Glass synthesis and preparation in controlled-environment furnaces, including a modulated differential scanning calorimeter from TA Instrument Q-1000, differential scanning calorimeter from Mettler Toledo DSC, infrared fluorescence spectrometer from Horiba Jobin Yvon 1000M and FTIR spectrometer from Bruker Tensor 27.
• High-Temperature Ceramic Processing Laboratory
  • High-temperature furnaces, including a spark plasma sintering, or SPS, furnace by Thermal Technology; a high-temperature tube furnace-controlled ramp rate up to 1100 °C; a high-temperature box furnace-controlled ramp rate up to 1700 °C; and glass-melting furnaces-standard box furnace operated up to 800°C.
  • Thermal gravimetric analyzer from Jupiter by NETZCH.
  • High-temperature oxidation testing with an oxyacetylene torch test facility with high-temperature optical pyrometer constructed in observation with ASTM E285-80.
  • Ceramic powder processing and characterization equipment, including a slow-speed ball mill, high-energy attrition mill, rotary evaporator, SPEX mill, mechanical sieve shaker, hydraulic press, cold-isostatic press, tape-caster and rheometer.
• Materials Processing and Characterization
  • Chemical synthesis facilities, including a porosimeter; scanning electron microscope; Gaertner L116E variable-angle ellipsometer; equipment for micro-Raman spectroscopy, spectral and time-resolved spectroscopy and photoluminescence; an N2-pulsed laser and dye laser system; controlled-environment tube and box furnaces; and computer-controlled spin and dip-coaters.
• Mechanical Testing Laboratory
  • Stress strain analyzer, MTS tensile testing instrument, hardness testers, microhardness testers, impact testers and fatigue testers.
• Optical Spectroscopic Facility
  • Ultraviolet-visual light absorption; micro-Raman spectroscopy with visible and near-infrared excitation; Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, or FTIR; photoluminescence, or PL, photoluminescence excitation, or PLE; ellipsometry.
  • Ultrafast titanium-sapphire, excimer, nitrogen, argon ion and solid-state laser systems.
  • Controlled-environment optical irradiation chamber with in-situ spectroscopic analysis, closed-loop helium cryogenic cooler.
  • Near-field scanning optical microscopy, or NSOM; atomic force microscopy, or AFM; 2D surface profilometry.
• Polymer Synthesis and Processing Laboratory
  • Facilities to synthesize, process and fabricate polymer-based systems and devices.
• Surface Chemistry and Electrochemistry Laboratory
  • Single-wafer MegPie tool, cyclic voltammetry capabilities, and Megbowl process system.
• Thin-Film Deposition Facility
  • Dual-source RF-magnetron sputtering deposition system.
  • External quantum efficiency, or EQE, measurement system.
  • Atomic force microscope system.
  • Universal four-point probe station.
  • Thermal evaporation deposition system.
  • Optoelectronic thin films characterization lab for Hall Effect measurement.
  • Current-voltage and photovoltaic efficiency measurement.

Other Facilities

UA materials scientists also use the following campus resources:

• Micro/Nano Fabrication Center
• UITS Research Computing Services
• University Imaging Cores Kuiper Materials Imaging and Characterization Facility
• W.M. Keck Center for Surface and Interface Imaging