Instruments

Scanning Electron Microscopy

The FEI Quanta 200 scanning electron microscope has a thermionic emission electron source and both high vacuum and low-vacuum modes of operation as well as energy dispersive X-ray analysis. It is complemented by a Denton Desk IV vapor deposition system for sample coating.

Atomic Force Microscopy

The 5500 AFM from Agilent has the capability to operate in the following modes: contact mode, acoustic mode, phase imaging, scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), lateral force microscopy (LFM), electric force microscopy (EFM), magnetic force microscopy (MFM), current sensing AFM (CSAFM), and scanning Kelvin probe microscopy (SKPM), etc. It has capability of imaging samples up to 250 ºC, with gaseous environmental control for inert or reactive gases. The scanner has a maximum vertical resolution of 0.5 Å and a maximum vertical range of 7.5 µm. The maximum lateral range for a given scan is 100 µm, and the maximum sample size that can be mounted is 20 x 20 mm.

X-Ray Diffraction

The Rigaku Ultima III X-Ray Diffractometer performs x-ray diffraction (XRD), a form of non-destructive analysis of materials, typically in powder or thin film form. XRD has a wide variety of applications in materials characterization, such as determination of crystal structure and orientation, phase identification, and detection of trace compounds in a material.

3-D Optical Profilometry

The Veeco Wyko NT9100 Optical Profiler performs non-contact, 3-D surface measurements using a vertical scanning interferometry (VSI) mode for a wide variety of topologies, as well as phase-shift interferometry (PSI) mode for more subtle profile changes. The NT9100 has sub-nanometer vertical resolution, and closed-loop vertical positioning through a 10 mm range. The SJSU system is configured with an automated X-Y stage with 150 mm range. Magnification and lateral resolution depend on the available combination of objective lens and field-of-view (FOV) lens, with the SJSU configuration summarized in the table below. Larger fields can be imaged with an automated stitching feature included in the control software.