URI Core Facility Equipment – Sensors and Surface Technology Partnership (SSTP) Microscopy Laboratory 

The Sensors and Surface Technology Partnership (SSTP) Microscopy Laboratory originated in 1994 to form a team of faculty aimed at tackling the challenges of developing thin film sensors and looking at surface coatings. This multi-user facility has been supporting the research efforts of faculty and industrial partners for over 30 years. This laboratory is managed by Michael Platek, an Electrical Materials Engineer, and many of the instruments are set up as service centers (mplatek@uri.edu).

Major equipment includes:

  • JEOL 5900 LV environmental scanning electron microscope. This system has an extra-large chamber for handling a wide variety of samples. It has both high vacuum in addition to low vacuum capability for handling samples that can not be coated. It has EDS chemical analysis to understand the chemical composition.   
  • Physical Electronics Multitechnique Surface Analyzer: capable of performing Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES) and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) with a Argon Ion sputter gun for depth profiling. Both of these techniques are suited for understanding the true surface chemistry (50 to 100 angstroms). The argon ion gun enables users to not only probe the surface chemistry but understand how the chemistry up to 20,000 angstroms into the film.
  • Thermo K-Alpha X-ray Photoelectron Spectrometer with Argon Ion sputter gun can look at the surface chemistry (50 to 100 angstroms) with a larger stage to handle multiple samples. The argon ion gun can perform depth profiles to understand how the chemistry changes deeper within the sample.
  • Shimadzu Maxima 7000 XRD: capable of doing powder & thin film diffraction.
  • Shimadzu Electron Probe MicroAnalysis (EPMA) is a field emission microscope which has state of the art EDS and WDS analysis. WDS has higher resolution which enables you to quantify peaks that could not be resolved using traditional EDS analysis.
  • MRC 8667 RF Sputtering instruments (3)
  • Optical Associates Mask Aligner

Minor equipment includes a full photolithography laboratory, a wide variety of annealing furnaces, Zeiss stereomicroscope, Nikon Optiphot reflective microscope, Dektak for surface morphology studies and polishing tables for metallography.