Current Needs

We’ve made great strides lately in updating the instrumentation in the lab, but there is more work to be done. Your generation donation is most welcome! Some of our most pressing needs are:

  • Atomic spectroscopy: our old AA perished (and it was high time too!) and we would love to replace it with a modern instrument of better capabilities. The high goal is an inductively-coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer (ICP-OES); the middle goal is a microwave-plasma atomic emission spectrometer (MP-AES). Matching funds may be available.
  • A new CHN analyzer: our current instrument has flatlined and there is little hope of it recovering. As a campus and department with a strong materials science component, this is a highly important piece of equipment.
  • A replacement for the Cary 50 UV-vis: yes, it is still working, but we don’t know how long that will last…and we don’t relish the thought of graduates from 20+ years ago seeing it still on the bench. Because it has a proprietary interface (it fits an ISA slot, if you remember those) the computer cannot be upgraded and so the machine will never be on the campus computer network.