Surface analysis techniques for advanced materials
28 Nov 2012
The Mazovian Centre for Surface Analysis (MCSA) was opened today at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Poland.
The Centre is housing research instruments financed from different programmes, among other from EU-funded NOBLESSE project. This equipment allows studies of material samples with over a dozen spectroscopic and microscopic techniques.
“Laboratories working with scanning techniques had since long been operated at our Institute. Now we have upgraded their equipment, and the European funds allowed us for buying the last missing component, the electron microscope.
“All that was left to do was to dot the i’s and to merge the laboratories into one unit specialising in surface analysis techniques”, explained Robert Ho?yst, the managing director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS).
The analysis of materials surface properties is increasingly playing a substantial role in science and industry. Even tiny amounts of impurities in a solid, on a few molecules per million scale, may emerge out of the material and cover its surface.
The Centre provides over a dozen surface science techniques for studying the surfaces of solids
The layer resulting from such a segregation significantly modifies the properties of the sample. At present, the equipment at the Mazovian Centre for Surface Analysis allows for analysing physico-chemical properties of even only two the most external atomic layers of the sample. The results of the analyses are used, for instance, in materials engineering and electronics.
The most essential equipment of the Centre include: a PHI 5000 VersaProbe multi-chamber spectrometer, an ESCALAB-210 spectrometer, a NanoSEM 450 scanning electron microscope, a MICROLAB 350 scanning Auger microanalyser, and an Autolab PGSTAT302N Electrochemical System for Corrosion Studies.
“At present, the Centre provides over a dozen surface science techniques for studying the surfaces of solids, including photoelectron spectroscopy, Auger spectroscopy, tunnelling microscopy, atomic force microscopy and others. It’s quite a unique mix of methods used in a single ultra high vacuum”, says Prof. Aleksander Jab?o?ski, the head of the MCSA.
“It’s also noteworthy that our equipment will be recorded in the ELAD - an electronic laboratory equipment database, designed for the use by small and medium-size enterprises and research institutions cooperating under the Mazovian Valley of Green Chemistry project”, he adds.
Much of the measurement time at the MCSA is devoted to orders from scientific and research institutions belonging to the NANOBIOM consortium, working on application of quantum semiconductor nanostructures in biology and medicine.
“At present, 40% of the research time is related to the commissioned work, more and more often for the industry. All in all, we collaborated with nearly one hundred external organisations. And it’s to be remembered that we are also doing our own research using our equipment”, said Jab?o?ski.
