Facilities

Our facilities are designed to study outer Solar System material at cryogenic temperatures.  To accomplish this, we have multiple vacuum chambers connected to gas cylinders via a series of pipelines. One of the chambers provides an enclosed volume for creating a mixture in the gas phase, which can then be condensed as a thin ice film or released into a thick cell and condensed into a liquid. The thin film configuration is connected to the FTIR and can reach temperatures of 6 K, whereas the thick cell has both Raman and FTIR capabilities and can go down to 30 K.  In utilizing both Raman and infrared in our experiments we are better able to characterize the thermal environment and crystal structure of molecules being studied.