Research Facilities
Briefly, with our multicluster vacuum system, there are flexibility both for making high quality PLD grown films and heterostructures with atomic-layer precision, and for systematic in-situ analysis of as-grown films and heterostructures. As all the growth and surface/structural analyses can be performed in-situ under high vacuum, which avoids any possible surface contamination; thus allowing to explore phenomena that would otherwise be lost when films are exposed to ambient conditions.
In our research lab, we use a multicluster vacuum system architecture equipped with a Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) chamber for thin film growth. This system has several in-situ film surface monitoring and characterization tools: Reflection High-Energy Electron Diffraction (RHEED), X-ray Photoemission Spectroscopy (XPS), Low Energy Electron Diffraction (LEED), and Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM). The blue arrows in the pictures below indicate the location of the PLD growth chamber and of different analysis chambers.
Furthermore, we also often perform angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) investigations through collaborations using a laboratory based source or at synchrotron lightsource. Our multicluster vacuum system has flexibility to be interfaced with a vacuum suitcase, a technology for long distance sample transportation in ultra-high vacuum for further in-situ studies at different locations like, for example synchrotron-based ARPES studies at the LSU Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices (CAMD); as well as at other national and international synchrotron radiation facilities.