Lab Facilities

Micro and Nano Mechanics Laboratory

------------------------------------------

Newark College of Engineering

Facilities

Experimental facilities available in Prof. Nadimpalli's laboratory:

Substrate curvature measurement setup integrated with an MBRAUN glovebox (which maintains Argon atmosphere at 25 °C with < 0.1 ppm of O₂ and H₂O): This apparatus is capable of in situ stress measurement in thin film battery electrodes during charge/discharge cycling process.

Home made electrochemical cell (the teflon beaker inside the glovebox) allows for laser beams (for stress measurements) to access the electrodes while they are being electrochemically cycled.

MBRAUN glovebox: Maintains Argon atmosphere at 25 °C with < 0.1 ppm of O₂ and H₂O inside the glove compartment, which is ideal to investigate fundamental electrochemical behavior of various electrodes.

Solartron 1470E Potentiostat integrated with MBraun glovebox: Capable of conducting various electrochemical experiments such as galvanostatic and potentiostatic charge/discharge cycling, open circuit testing, and cyclic voltammogram measurements

Coin cell apparatus, to make coin cells, is also available inside the glovebox

Bruker Nano Dimension Edge atomic force microscope: This AFM is capable of liquid cell (electrochemical) measurements

iNano nanoindeter: This equipment is ideal for characterizing the mechanical behavior of thinfilms, including, but not limited to, viscoelastic properties, elastic properties, and fracture properties of various nanoscale samples.

indenter

A micro tensile test setup that was designed and developed in-house: This is capable of measuring forces of the order of mN. The strain measurement is carried out by a digital image correlation technique.

Spincoater (VTC 100A from MTI Corp.) with vaccum chuck, to prepare thin polymeric films

Optical table (4x 8 from Newport) with various optical test setups

Lab equipped with fume hood

Microbalances for precision measurements, Vacuum ovens and other miscellaneous equipment for sample preparation

30 kN MTS load frame with environment chamber (-129 ^oC to 315 ^oC): This machine allows us to understand the mechanical behavior of materials at continuum scale.

Facilities available for us in the Department:

3D digital microscope capable of measuring surface characteristics
VIC 2D digital image correlation software integrated with tensile testing machine for measuring displacement and strain fields of samples during testing
A 24-core Linux cluster and individual workstations for running computationally expensive models

Central facilities available at NJIT:

Microelectronics center for nanoscale fabrication (wet/dry oxidation, LPCVD and PECVD of SiO₂, Sputtering, e-beam, wet/dry etching of Si, and other nanofabrication tools)
LEO 1530VP Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope for microstructural analysis
Philips PW3040 Difractometer for X-ray diffraction measurements
Other surface characterization tools such as FTIR spectrometer
Computing facilities with software packages such as ABAQUS and ANSYS for FE modeling
Machine shop equipped with general purpose tools such as lathe, milling, drilling, and CNC machines for preparation of samples and fabrication of experimental setups

Facilities available through collaboration:
Through collaborative agreement, our research group has access to experimental facilities at Univ. of Pennsylvania such as Singh Center for Nanotechnology which include

Advanced nanofabrication tools
Surface characterization facilities (e.g., FIB, XPS, and AFM)
Computational facilities

MNM Lab, Prof. Siva Nadimpalli, Office: 973 596 3678, Lab: 973 596 5667, Email: nadimpal@njit.edu