Welcome
Welcome to Materials Science Central Facilities. Central Facilities is a group
of eight laboratories which provide many essential resources for the faculty, students and
researchers. The goal in developing these laboratories was to provide an infrastructure
which could serve the wide range of ongoing research activities in this department and in
collaborations with researchers in other departments and institutions. This
infrastructure is also a key part of our laboratory teaching program. Students get
to use professional, research-grade instruments to do modern, sophisticated experiments
similar to those they will be doing in their future employment or in their graduate
studies.
The Laboratories
The table below lists the laboratories which are part of Central Facilities and summarizes
the types activities and major equipment in each laboratory. All laboratories are
located in Engineering II.
| Room | Laboratory | Major Equipment | Uses |
| 108, 110, 112, 116, 167 | Electron Microscopy | SEM, TEM, AFM | Research, graduate and undergraduate courses |
| 117A | X-Ray Diffraction | Powder Diffractometer | Research, upper division courses |
| 118 | Metallographic Specimen Preparation | Precision saws, polishers, grinders, etcher, fume hood | Research, graduate courses, supports undergraduate courses |
| 119 | Utility | Tools, supplies, precision saw, high-temperature furnace | Research, maintenance |
| 120 | Electron Microscopy Specimen Preparation | Metallograph, ultrasonic Gatan disc cutter, Gatan dimpler, VCR dimpler, VCR ion mill, Struers jet polisher, perchloric hood | Research, graduate courses |
| 157 | Teaching Laboratory 2 | Six furnaces, two ovens, abrasive cut-off saw, two automated specimen mounting presses, grinders and polishers for basic metallography, small metallograph, Jominy quench tank, fume hood | Research, upper division courses |
| 163 | Teaching Laboratory 1 | Three computer-controlled 50 kN capacity tensile testers, charpy impact tester, three Rockwell-type hardness testers, Jominy fixture, system multimeters, chart recorders | Research, upper and lower division courses, out-reach events |
| 165 | Image Processing | SGI Indigo²/XZ workstation, on Pentium-based PC, four AV Power Macs connected to four Nikon metallographs, reflected/transparency mode flatbed scanner, Leitz metallograph, laser printer, dye-sublimation color printer | Research, upper and lower division courses, out-reach events |
| 167 | Thermal Analysis | Perkin-Elmer DTA-7, DSC-7, HT-TGA-7, DMA-7, microbalance | Research |
Access to Central Facilities
Access to the equipment in Materials Science Central Facilities is not difficult to
obtain. Just contact the laboratory's manager
to discuss your needs and your qualifications and to discuss issues such as costs, if any,
and consumable supplies. While the door is not wide open to everyone on campus, we
are happy to be share our facilities, in a neighborly spirit, with our scientific
colleagues.
Service Work
In general we are unable to do service work for either campus or off-campus researchers.
We simply don't have the staff. Occasionally we do do favors for our friends
and for the public but otherwise most of the work done here is done by the students,
faculty and researchers themselves. We like it that way. It builds character.
However, for our major instruments which are on a recharge and for which we do have staff
assigned we can, when certain conditions are met, offer analytical and consulting
services. Contact the facility's manager if
this is something you are interested in or if you'd like a referral to any of the region's
excellent commercial laboratories.
Recharges
Recharges rate have been established only for the major instruments: the diffractometer,
the electron microscopes and the AFM. There is no recharge for using any of the
minor instruments or computers. These recharges help us the department recover at
least a part of the cost of maintaining and operating these laboratories. Still, we
do ask that you do your best to help us keep costs down and for non-recharge instruments
we also ask you to bring many of your own consumable supplies. We do provide
certain consumables and if you are uncertain about which ones you will need to bring you
can look up the instrument on this web site.
Contact
If you have any questions regarding Materials Science Central Facilities or any of the
instruments or the types of work we do here please feel free to contact the facility's manager or the Department of Chemical Engineering
and Materials Science at the address and phone given below.
Division of Materials Science
If you have any questions or comments regarding this web site please contact the webmaster.
Updated on June 25, 2001
Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA 95616
USA
Phone: 530/752-0400
Web: www.chms.ucdavis.edu