In order to answer our research questions, we seek out and/or build many different types of advanced instrumentation. Students thus learn how to build and maintain complex vacuum equipment, optical set-ups, and more.
In our own lab space, students have designed a home-built Mechanically Controlled Break Junction (MCBJ) set-up with custom control electronics for studying Quantum Transport. Students continue to modify and improve our lab's ultra-high vacuum chamber for Angle Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy (ARPES) experiments, and we can perform more complex experiments in this chamber using the attached Ultrafast Laser System. Faster and more sensitive ARPES experiments are made possible by the first NanoESCA instrument to arrive in the United States.
Outside of Arizona, students travel to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) to perform ultrafast x-ray emission experiments and to Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) to perform low-temperature scanning probe experiments.
This great variety of set-ups and instruments gives students many hands-on opportunities to develop new skills and knowledge about optics, electronics, machining, programming, and, above all, trouble-shooting.