PhotoConversion Materials

Research Infrastructure of PhotoConversion Materials

• Optics laboratory

  including:

  • Inverted microscope (Zeiss Axio Observer 7 Materials) equipped with a monochromator (Andor Shamrock 500 Spectrograph) and an EMCCD camera (Andor Newton 970) for in-situ dark-field scattering spectroscopy of (and surface-enhanced Raman scattering on) single nanoparticles;
  • Inverted microscope (Zeiss Axio Observer 7) for stochastic super-resolution fluorescence microscopy and single molecule detection;
  • UV-Vis-NIR spectrophotometer (Agilent Cary 5000) + integrating sphere;
  • UV-Vis-NIR spectrophotometer (Perkin Elmer lambda 900) + integrating sphere;
  • Optical setups and cells for photo(electro)chemical experiments;
  • Olympus BX60 optical microscope with BF and DIC (Wollaston prism and Normarski filter), including polarization analyzers for transmission, HD camera  and reflection, condenser lens with diaphragm and objectives from 1.25x to 100x

• Sample production techniques

  • Thermal evaporation by resistive boats and/or ceramic cups;
  • UHV DC and RF (argon) magnetron sputtering (up to 4 simultaneous sources);
  • Spin coating (also in protected atmosphere);
  • Annealing by lab ovens (<300 °C),  hotplates (<500 °C), wafer oven (<800 °C) and tube ovens (<1600 °C);
  • Reactive Ion Etching (with Ar, O2, SF6);
  • Chemical etching facilities (HF, aqua regia, piranha solution);
  • Yellow room for lithography with mask-aligner and gold wire-bonder.

• Analysis techniques

   including:

  • Benchtop mass spectrometer for gas analysis (Pfeiffer omnistar)
  • X-ray diffraction (Brucker D8 XRD);
  • Kelvin probe force microscope, KPFM (Brucker multimode8 Scanning Probe Microscope AFM/STM);
  • AFM (Nanoscope III).
  • Impedance-spectroscopy/Potentiostats/Galvanostats/IV-measurements (Methrohm Autolab PGstat302N, EG&G 263A, Keithley 2400).
  • Veeco Wyco optical profiler;
  • Ocean Optics USB Fiber coupled UV-VIS-NIR spectrometers;
  • Solar simulator (Lot Oriel) and UV source (Ushio SP-9 spot cure);
  • Lock-in amplifiers / Oscilloscopes / data acquisition boards (NI DAQ) / Multimeters (Keithley 2000);
  • Gas mixing systems (multi channel, Bronkhorst EL-flow, 2 – 2000 ml/min, (low ppm)).

  Our Computational/Modelling tools include Lumerical FDTD (photonics simulation toolkit), Scout (optical properties of thin film materials), FRED (optomechanics model ray tracing), Glotaran (open source global and target analysis for time-resolved spectroscopy), Gaussian (computational chemistry toolkit), Matlab, Labview, etc.

  In addition to the above facilities, we also work in the Institute for Life, Lasers, and Biophotonics (LaserLaB Amsterdam) to carry out experiments in time-resolved electronic and vibrational spectroscopies and we have regular access to the nanofabrication and nanocharacterization facilities at the AMOLF NanoLab Amsterdam.