The Grainger College of Engineering
Materials Research Laboratory

Facilities News

All Central Research Facilities labs and tools available again - the MRL plumbing repair project is now completed

Updated 03/19/2026:

The plumbing repair project that partially affected several of our labs in the MRL building over the past months is now completed.

All our labs and tools in the MRL Central Research Facilities are not open and available (including our Fab cleanrooms). Thank you for your patience!

*********************************

Research Facilities News

Upcoming Tools for the MRL Research Facilities

 

(1) Oxford Instruments Asylum Research Vero S AFM (spring 2026)

The Oxford Instruments Asylum Research Vero S AFM builds on the popular, easy-to-use Cypher AFM design.  The unique feature of the Vero is the QPDI interferometric cantilever detection which measures the vertical displacement of the cantilever instead of the deflection of the cantilever.  This minimizes artifacts and ambiguities resulting from changes to local cantilever angle, and it also decreases the noise floor of the instrument related to cantilever detection for more sensitive measurements.  The Vero can also be run in standard optical beam detection (OBD) mode, in which case it operates as a regular Cypher AFM.

The Vero at MRL will include these upgrades:

  • blueDrive photothermal excitation
  • Fast Force Mapping

In addition to modes requiring no additional hardware, the Vero at MRL is compatible with these Cypher accessories (shared with MRL's Cypher S):

  • Droplet cantilever holder (OBD mode)
  • Dual-gain ORCA conductive AFM cantilever holder
  • Air Temperature Controller (contact staff to perform the hardware swap)
  • Scanning Tunneling Microscopy

This instrument was supported in part by the NSF through the Illinois MRSEC: DMR-2309037.

(2) Bruker D8 Discover X-ray Diffractometer (Spring 2026).

Our Bruker D8 Discover Advanced X-ray Diffractometer is a vertical theta/theta system with a centric eularian cradle with integrated Chi, Phi and X-Y-Z movement translations capable of accommodating bulk, powder, and thin film samples. Equipped with a double laser unit (2 red lasers and a camera) for easy sample height alignment capable of accommodating non-uniform samples.

  • Powder/Bulk sample size limitation (80mm x 50mm x 20 mm)
  • 5” (127mm) wafers/films possible with 5” vacuum chuck.

The system uses the TRIO optic allowing for easy automated optical switching between Bragg-Brentano, Parallel Beam, and High Resolution 2-bounce monochromator options to accommodate a variety of experimental needs.

  • Line focus Bragg Brentano configuration using programmable divergence slits.
  • Line focus Parallel Beam configuration using a Goebel x-ray mirror in the primary optic. (40mm graded parabolic multilayer optic that creates highly parallel beam while reducing bremsstrahlung and Cu Kβ radiation)
  • Line focus High-Resolution configuration with a Goebel x-ray mirror and a double-bounce Ge (004) monochromator (“channel cut configuration”) in the primary optics. (A Germanium crystal asymmetrically cut and aligned to Cu Kα for complete monochromation)

The system uses the Eigher2 R 500 K detector with 75 micron pixel size, with a total of 1,028 x 512 pixels, with 6.7x108 photons per sec per mm2 capacity. The detector can be used in 0D (point detector), 1D (line) or 2D (areal) modes  which are fully software integrated and configured using the instrument control software.

  • Powder XRD.
  • Thin film and grazing incidence XRD.
  • High resolution epitaxial and single crystal materials.
  • Reciprocal space mapping.
  • Texture and stress analysis.
  • X-ray reflectivity.
  • EVA data analysis and profile fitting software; TOPAS structure refinement software; Leptos software for stress and reflectometry analysis.
  • Integrated software scan automation
  • Double laser sample alignment