Lab & Shared Facilities
Arges Lab occupies about 1000 square feet (room 1130) with two fume hoods in the Patrick F. Taylor (PFT) building . PFT opened during the 2016 to 2017 academic school year and is the home to LSU's College of Engineering.
Automated spray deposition system with vacuum and heating table for preparing membrane electrode assemblies, bipolar membranes, and layer-by-layer assemblies
Schlenk line in synthesis fume hood with temperature controlled hot plates featuring magnetic stirrers
Carver mechanical hot press with temperature control capabilities
Gamry Potentiostat – 3000 AE – 8 channel potentiostat (32 V, 1.5 A) with frequency response analyzer (EIS 1 MHz),
Gamry 30k Current Booster – enhances potentiostat current range to 30 A and measures impedance values below 100 μΩ.
Scribner 850e 50 Amp, Fuel Cell test stand with 5 and 25 cm2 cell hardware equipped with frequency response analyzer for electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, automated water refilled for humidifiers, mass flow controllers 0.1 to 2.0 SPLM, and back pressure accessory. System is also used for electrolysis with Gamry current booster.
Millipore deionization water system with Elix that can produces 18.2 MΩ of water and
less than 10 ppb of TOC.
Custom built solvent vapor annealing chamber for self-assembly of block copolymers. The system features 4 computer controlled mass flow controllers with three solvent bubblers and a transparent quartz window for monitoring film thickness in realtime with Filmetric tool.
Gamry electrochemical quartz-crystal microbalance (QCM) in liquid or gas vapor flow cell with inlet and outlet for heating/cooling fluid. Setup is used for monitoring solvent uptake in polymer thin films (e.g., water uptake under humidity control or different salt concentrations or organic solvent uptake during solvent vapor annealing). Unit can be integrated with solvent vapor annealing chamber or fuel cell test station for humidity control.
Custom-built gas flow cell for electrochemical measurements of thin films on interdigitated electrodes. Gas vapor may consist of water or solvent vapors. Temperature control is possible. This flow cell fits with the existing fuel cell test stand or the solvent vapor annealing chamber.
Filmetrics F3-UV spectra reflectance spectrometer for measuring film thickness
Scribner 857 20 Amp, +/- 3V, Redox Flow Battery test stand with 25 cm2 cell hardware equipped with frequency response analyzer for electrochemical impedance
spectroscopy, cell temperature control, state of charge cell, and electrolyte tank
heaters and mixers. System is also used for dioxide electrolysis with Gamry current
booster.
Students working in the Arges Lab.
Chemical storage and waste storage
Membrane capacitive deionization flow cell equipped with peristaltic pump and pH and ionic conductivity probes (data recorded to a flash memory card).
Electrodeionization unit with pumps and conductivity probe
Thermal annealing chamber with temperature control. The chamber uses a Edwards vacuum pump or a nitrogen stream to maintain an inert environment during annealing.
Vacuum oven
Ultraviolet crosslinker for crosslinking polymers and wet etching block copolymers
Vial mixer and volumetric pipets
Analytical balance and gravity oven #2 for drying glassware
Laurell spincoater, Branson sonicator, analytical balance, and hotplate (for baking or painting MEAs) in fume hood #1
Leveling table with glass plates for drop casting films to make polymer electrolyte membranes. The table is used in a gravity oven #2 to evaporate solvent from the polymer-solvent mixture.
Our students use the following shared facilities at LSU and nearby Tulane University
CAMD – The J. Bennett Johnston, Sr., Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices at LSU
Synchrotron radiation source for x-ray scattering, spectroscopy, and lithography
Cleanroom for microfabrication and nanofabrication of devices (e.g., mask aligner, reactive ion etching, e-beam evaporation, e-beam lithography, and sputtering) and metrology (AFM and SEM)
Shared Instrumentations Facility at LSU
Houses electron microscopes (SEM, TEM), XPS, XRD, and NMR spectrometers
Tulane University Micro/Nano Fabrication Cleanroom Facility
