We use a wide variety of equipment in our labs. Through a
large number of grants by the section more than a decade we
have been able to build a world class research facility. We do
have cleanroom and microscopy facilities outside the confines
of the SurfCat section at DTU Physics, which are located at
DTUNanolab.
Sputtering Equipment We have 2 AJA Inc magnetron sputtering
systems with the one of the left being an ultra-high
vacuum chamber and the one on the right being a high
vaccum chamber. These are easy to use durable and
productive machines and AJA is a great company to work
with. I would highly recommend these systems to
anybody. We also should be having a new UHV sputter
chamber that has an in-line transfer directly to an XPS
and potentially other units. The transfer line and
XPS will be installed in DTU in the spring of 2026, and
the sputter chamber should be installed by the end of
2026.
X-Ray Diffraction We have 2 almost identical PanAnalytical
X'Pert Pro systems where one in typically used for in-situ
reactions and the other is used for powders and thin
films.
Electrochemical Mass Spectrometer (EC-MS)
We have an electrochemical mass spectrometer used for
world-class sensitivity and time resolution for various
electrcatalysis reactions. This is basically just a
silicon wafer with holes in in attached to a gas
chromatograph. Nevertheless the engineering involved with
this allows us to get detection layers as small as about
1/10 a monolayer of reactant coming off a catalyst. The
advantage is there is no more sensitive technique for
gases and extremely volatile liquids, however less
volatile species such as ethanol provide a decreased
sensitivity, (wherein differential mass spectrometery
(DEMS) overtakes it as the most sensitive technique.)
The advantage is this device can measure products at the
nanoamp regime, however the disadvange is that its upper
current density is typically aroudn 1 mA, but depends on
the product being produced.
XPS We have a Thermo Fischer XPS, where on the
back side we have a nitrogen purged atmospheric pressure
chamber where we can do electrochemcial measurements.
The advantage of this is that we can directly insert the
electrodes into the XPS without exposure to the oxidizing
conditions of air.
Furnaces We have your standard Carbolite box
furnaces as well as tube
furnaces. Our quasi-homemade tube furnaces can go to
1200C. We have it currently set-up so we can run 3
different gasses through them. The furnaces on the right
have a line to pull
vacuum. Flushing with vacuum allows us to efficiently
pull out all the oxygen before annealing in inert
environments.
Electrochemical Set-up
We use a
multitude of potentiostats exclusively from Biologic. We
use both the standard models and the premium 300
series models. We have approximately 10 chassies and
about 25 channels. In general these are quite good potentiostats
with excellent support and I would
highly recommend them. We have found that at low current
densities and for sensitive applications the 300 series
models due to provide significant benefits to justify
their extra costs. Costwise you are looking at
Quartz Crystal Microbalance
(SRS)- These can be used to determine very small changes
in mass. We use these to determine whether we are
corroding monolayers of catalyst. They can very easily be
connected to electrochemical set-ups to allow for the very
powerful electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance
studies. These are quite cheap and, in my opinion, are
one of the most under-utilized tools to analyze
electrochemical reactions
Gas Chromatographs
We have a collection of gas chomatographs (GC), primarily
because we have not found a company that we are satisfied
with. We have 3 operational Agilent GCs, 2 Perkin
Elmer GCs and 1 Thermo-Fischer Trace 1300 GC. Perkin
Elmer provided us with cheap options relying just on
TCD's. All our Agilents and our Thermo Fischer
contain FID and TCD. All our GC's operate in-line with
our electrolyzers, thus they use
a 6-way valve and automated sampling to insert products.
From left to right, the pictures below are our 6890 model,
7890 model with head space analyzer and our 580C Perkin
Elmer model. All systems are hooked up to allow
in-situ measurements from our electrochemical cells.
Agilent 6890
Agilent 7890 with static head space analyzer
(machine on the left)
Perkin Elmer 580C
Perkin Elmer 580C (with heated valve box)
Thermo Fisher Trace 1300
HPLC
We have a new Agilent 1260 Infinity system. It works just
fine for testing small carbon chain (C1-C3), alcohols,
aldehydes and caboylic acids (or their ionic equivalents
at higher pH). We also have a Shimadzu HPLC that we
are setting up for non-aqueous based solvents and products
within.
FTIR
We have a Bruker FTIR on which we do surface enhanced FTIR
with. For CO2 and CO electrolysis, we primarily are
only seeing CO and carbonate binding. However this is
still quite useful for us, especially as CO can bind at
different areas within a crystal lattice (e.g. on top vs.
bridge) and the FTIR peak shifts as a function of that