Facility Overview

Experimental Facility

Material Characterization and Energy Conversion Lab (ERC 326):

Tunable Light Source (Oriel, TLS-250Q, UV-VIS-NIR) with a monochromator and a lock-in amplifier (Oriel, Merlin) for external quantum efficiency (EQE) characterization of solar and near-IR cells with reference detectors, and for angular and polarization dependent spectral-hemispherical or diffuse reflection/transmission/absorption measurement with an 8” PTFE integrating sphere (IS). Compatible fiber optics assembly is also available for small samples;
Fourier-transform spectrometer (Thermo Scientific Nicolet iS50, VIS-NIR-MIR) for characterizing wavelength, angle, polarization, temperature-dependent reflection/transmission/absorption/emission of samples in milimeter sizes from cryogenic to high temperatures:
- Smart iTR™ attenuated total reflectance (ATR) sampling accessory;
- Transmission accessory with home-built heating stage (room temp to 150C) for semi-transparent samples;
- Harrick Scientific Seagull variable angle (5~85deg) specular reflection accessory with heating stage (room temp to 150C) for opaque samples;
- PIKE 10Spec 10 degree specular reflection accessory (room temp) for semi-transparent samples;
- PIKE VeeMax variable angle (30~80deg) specular reflection accessory (room temp) for semi-transparent samples;
- PIKE IntegratIR 3” gold integrating sphere for measuring infrared hemispherical/diffuse transmission/reflection (room temp);
- FTIR fiber optics with Harrick FiberMate2™ fiber optic coupler and optical fibers (VIS-NIR-MIR) for in-situ spectral characterization of material properties due to thermal, mechanical, electrical or chemical changes;
- High-temperature emissometry home built with a blackbody calibration source for characterizing spectral-directional emissivity from 200C up to 1000C);
- Cryogenic-to-high-temperature spectrometry platform home-built with optical cryostats (Janis, VPF-800) coupled with FTIR spectrometer (VIS-NIR-MIR) for characterizing spectral-directional reflectance/transmittance/absorptance of samples cooled or heated in high vacuum environment from 77K – 800K;
Fourier-transform Infrared Microscope (Thermo Scientific Nicolet Continuum) for characterizing spectral reflection/transmission/absorption/emission of samples down to tens of micrometer sizes with heating stage (room temp to 150C) or under electrical gating;
Microscale Optical Reflection and Transmission Microscope (MORT) home-built with fiber-coupled QTH lamp, optic fibers, and CCD spectrometer (200~1000nm) integrated with LabVIEW-controlled scanning laser thermoreflectance (TR) via x40 objectives for 2D temperature mapping with high spatial resolution down to 2 micrometer;
Thermal property analyzer (Hotdisk 2500S) based on transient-plane source method for fast characterizations of thermal conductivity/diffusivity and specific heat capacity of various materials with full modules, sensors, and software; (rotating with Profs. Beomjin Kwon and Qiong Nian)

Solar thermal/thermopohotovaltaic test home-built with a 1kW solar simulator (Newport, Xe lamp) optically coupled with 12” box vacuum chamber in high vacuum provided by a turbo pump (Pfeiffer HiPace 80) to characterize solar-to-heat efficiency for novel selective solar absorbers, and solar-to-power efficiency with selective absorber/emitter and thermophotovoltaic cells under variable solar concentrations up to 60 suns for 1cm² samples/devices;
Thermopohotovaltaic/vacuum thermal test home-built with variable vacuum gap distance between the emitter and the cell by a Z-stage inside a 24” stainless steel belljar vacuum chamber with a turbo pump (Agilent, TPS Compact) to characterize TPV conversion with selective emitter/filter/cell at high temperatures;
Dynamic cryothermal setup home-built for measuring tunable radiative heat flux between an emitter made of variable-emittance coating and a receiver with both temperatures precisely feedback controlled from 77 K to 800 K in a high vacuum environment of a cryostat with a turbo pump (Pfeiffer HiPace 80);
Outdoor radiative cooling test setup home-built with auto 8-channel temperature logger (Omega, OM-USB-TC) and accurate real-time solar pyranometer (KippZonen, CMP3) for measuring stagnation temperature, and with a built-in heater and digital power supply for measuring radiative cooling power of novel radiative cooling coatings;

Two Class 1000 modular softwall cleanrooms (Clean Air Products) for housing all optical and near-field thermal metrologies to minimize the dust contamination;
One 6′ fume hood along with spin coater, ultrasonic cleaner, hotplate for in-lab sample preparation and synthesis;
Optical microscopes: upright, inverted, dark-field, boom-stand, etc;

Near-field Radiation Lab (ERC 356):

Plate-Plate near-field thermal metrology (static) home-built to measure steady-state near-field radiative heat transfer between 5x5mm² samples at vacuum gaps down to 100nm created by either nanoparticles or patterned SU8 posts inside a 12” stainless steel belljar vacuum chamber and a turbo pump (Pfeiffer HiPace 80);
Plate-Plate near-field thermal metrology (tuning) home-built to measure tunable/transient near-field radiative heat transfer between 1cm² samples at vacuum gaps down to 200nm created by patterned SU8 posts along with in-situ gap capacitance measurement inside a 12” pyrex belljar vacuum chamber and a turbo pump;
Parallelism-plate near-field radiative thermal metrology home-built with Labview controlled tip-tilt motions by motorized stages to align two planar surfaces out of thermal equilibrium without contact down to hundreds of nanometer vacuum gaps for far-field and near-field radiative heat measurement; (in progress)
AFM tip-based near-field thermal metrology home-built to measure near-field radiative heat transfer based on laser-deflection technique with bimaterial cantilever and to study near-field force interaction with tuning fork at vacuum gaps down to 30nm precisely controlled by a piezo stage (MCL Nano-OP30) in high vacuum environment provided by a 18” stainless steel belljar vacuum chamber and a turbo pump (Agilent TPS-Flexy); (in progress)
Atomic force microscope home-built with A-probe (NanoAndMore), 3D nanopositioner (MCL, Nano-3D200), and digital feedback controller (MCL, MadPLL) for surface topography imaging of micro/nanostructures;

STM/AFM Lab (ISTB4 L1-17A):

Commercial High-vacuum STM/AFM (RHK Beetle) with variable magnetic field and optical access for studying extreme near-field radiative transfer; (DURIP award, installed)

Computational Resources

Student Office (ERC-316):

2x High-performance Workstations (Dell Precision T7600, 2 eight-core processors at 3.10GHz, 64GB Ram) for simulation work
4x Office Workstations (Dell Precision T1650, 2 four-core processors at 3.40GHz, 8GB Ram)
Commercial ANSYS Full Research Package for multiphysics simulation of coupled optical, thermal, mechanical phenomena at nanoscale
Commercial EM full-wave simulation package from Lumerical FDTD Solutions with one full license plus one additional engine license
Home-made Matlab codes for modeling radiative properties of multilayer thin films (thin-film optics and transfer matrix method, isotropic and anisotropic)
Home-made Matlab codes for modeling radiative properties of multilayer periodic micro/nanostructures (1D and 2D rigorous coupled-wave analysis)
Home-made Matlab codes for modeling near-field thermal radiation between planar layered structures and patterned structures with effective medium theory (fluctuational electrodynamics, isotropic and anisotropic)
Home-made Matlab codes for modeling near-field thermal radiation between periodic micro/nanostructures (fluctuational electrodynamics in combination with rigorous coupled-wave analysis based on scattering matrix method)

User Facility and Resources available at ASU

Purchasing and Vendors

ASU Purchasing (SUNRISE) (VWR, Thermo Fisher, McMaster-Carr, Staples, Agilent, etc) (ask Dr. Wang for access)
Newport, Thorlabs, Standa, Omega, KJ Lesker, Janis, Wafers, McMaster-Carr, Ebay, AFM probe (Vendor list)
Key and ISSAC request to the office and labs, see SEMTE Facility