EQUIPMENT
The group’s synthetic work is mainly carried out in a standard lab module. The lab houses 8 x 2M fume hoods, and has all the equipment needed for day to day operations. Air-sensitive work can be carried out in an MBraun nitrogen glove box.
After the preparative stage, reactions can be transferred to the Furnace room which houses a variety of box and tube furnaces capable of operating up to 1600 °C in air or under gases. The group also has access to a High Pressure Lab housing ovens for bomb work as well as several specialist high pressure synthetic rigs.
The primary analysis method used within the group is Powder X-ray Diffraction (PXD). Phase identification and data for Rietveld refinements under ambient conditions are carried out on a Siemens D5000. A Bruker D8 Advance has a range of sample stages for non-ambient data collection such as the Anton Parr HTK-1200 furnace allowing samples to be measured up to 1200 °C. The third available powder diffractometer is a Bruker C2. Its area detector and sample XYZ stage allow automated collection of data from combinatorial arrays. Further information on these instruments as well as single crystal diffraction can be found on the Diffraction@Southampton pages.
Materials can be further characterised by spectroscopy (IR, UV-Vis and Fluorescence) and Thermal analysis (TGA, DTA).
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