Material Synthesis

• • Fume hood with water, vacuum and air inlets

  • Chemical and hazardous waste storage

  • UV polymerization oven & UV lamps.

  • Thermal vacuum ovens.

Material Characterization

Our lab houses universal, dynamic, and thermal testing capabilities across three machines: a uniaxial mechanical tester, a cyclic mechanical tester, and a dynamic mechanical analyzer. These test machines are all equipped with thermal chambers and varying-precision load cells. Overall, these machines allow us to test from 0.1 mN to 30 kN with a temperature range from -200 to 400 ºC.

• • MTS Insight 30 with an environmental chamber and load cells (300N & 30kN) for thermomechanical characterizations of materials.

  • TA Instruments Electro-Force Dynamic Mechanical Analyzer (DMA, Model 3230) with an environmental chamber and load cells (5N & 450N) for thermomechanical characterization of materials as well as fatigue testing of materials and devices.

  • TA Q800 DMA with an 18 N load cell for the dynamic mechanical testing of polymers. The force resolution is 10^-4 N and the temperature control range is -200 – 400 ºC.

  • TA Q2000 Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) with the ACS air cooler & RSC cooler up to -90 °C.

  • Olympus BX-51 polarized optical microscope with differential interference contrast.

3D Printing

So far, our lab is equipped with multiple commercial and homemade 3D printers with different printing techniques, such as direct ink writing, fused deposition modeling, and digital light processing. These printers allow us to 3D print thermosets, thermoplastics, and their composites across different length scales.

• • Homemade direct-ink-writing 3D printer with the regulation of deposition pressure from 0 – 100 psi.

  • Hyrel extrusion-based direct-ink-writing 3D printer (System 30M, Norcross, GA) with 50×50×10 micron positional accuracy.

  • Homemade digital light processing 3D printer with 50×50 micron in-plane resolution.

  • Two desktop thermoplastics fused deposition modeling 3D printers (MakerBot, New York, NY).

Computational Software

• • ABAQUS

  • MATLAB

  • ANASYS

  • COMSOL