Equipping students for a bright future
From undergraduate students to postdoctoral fellows, access to this highly sophisticated instrumentation provides unique training opportunities that can help set them apart in the job market.
“There are not many opportunities for students to gain hands-on experience on these highly-sought instruments in the country. Here at UD, we are proud to offer comprehensive operation training and practical courses to our students at various levels to enrich their skillset in analytical chemistry,” said Xu Feng, director of the Surface Analysis Facility. “As the U.S. works to bring back the manufacturing of semiconductors, it’s a huge boost to get them noticed in the job market of microelectronics and semiconductors.”
This includes students involved in two UD Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) programs: the REU program for students with disabilities and a recently established REU program for undergraduate students from South America.
“Normally REU students come to UD for a reasonably short period of time. The expectation that you can have a result, or maybe even a paper, after a few months’ work … that’s exciting and attractive to students,” said Teplyakov.
State-of-the-art shared facility
The ToF-SIMS complements a suite of other contemporary instruments in the Surface Analysis Facility, including an atomic force-Raman microscope (AFM-Raman) to help researchers acquire topographical information about materials and an X-ray photoelectron spectrometer for securing molecular information on solid surfaces. Having these highly complementary techniques available in one laboratory allows researchers to be strategic in considering what information they want to capture.
“With these three instruments, we now have a first-rate surface analysis capability to support new lines of academic research and attract industrial collaborators,” said Teplyakov.
Already, the new instrument has drawn inquiries and interest from local companies interested in analyzing samples, including Chemours, Air Liquide, DuPont and others. Feng and his staff, meanwhile, are standing by to help with these inquiries and discuss possible research approaches.
“We warmly welcome researchers within and beyond the university to come in and enjoy these top-notch surface analysis techniques,” Feng said.