Equipment
The labs of the research group are equipped with state-of-the-art facilities for synthesis, purification and characterization of photoactive coordination compounds and functional (nano)materials. Advanced multiphoton micro(spectro)scopy methods are also developed and implemented.
Synthesis and characterization:
- Schlenk-lines, stirring plates, balances, glove-boxes, overnight fume-hoods, high-performance centrifuges and rotary evaporators.
- PuriFlash (automated chromatography from interchim) with quadrupole mass spectrometric (ESI and APCI) and UV-vis detection.
- Lyophilization (Lyovapur L-200)
- MLS-MWS Ethos.lean microwave reactor system with 850 W magnetron power and six SR-HT reactor chambers for reaction conditions up to 300 °C / 100 bar
- IR and NMR spectroscopy measurements as well as mass spectrometric and elemental analyses are carried out in central facilities generously provided by the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy at UoM. Facilities for surface analysis (AFM, STM, SEM-FIB, XPS, UPS) are available in cooperation with research groups from CeNTech, SoN and CiMIC.
Spatiotemporally-resolved micro(spectro)scopy:
- MicroTime 200 (PicoQuant) spatiotemporally resolved confocal luminescence microscope with single photon counting electronics (ps – ms), a spectrograph, single-photon laser diodes and a two-photon excitation laser (Spectra Physics MAITAI EHPDS Ti:Sa oscillator, including a double-stage pulse picker from A.P.E.); this microscope is coupled via an optical fiber to an exclusively devoted spectroluminometer PicoQuant FluoTime 300 (steady-state and time resolved, 50 ps to 1 s, 300 nm to 1400 nm, with photon counting electronics, picoseconds laser heads and a pulsed flash lamp) including a thermostatic sample holder, double-grating excitation and emission polarizers .
- Spectroluminometer PicoQuant FluoTime 300 (steady-state and time resolved, 50 ps to 100 ms, 300 nm to 1400 nm, with photon counting electronics, picosecond laser heads and a pulsed flash lamp) including a thermostatic sample holder, single-grating excitation and emission polarizers.
- Liquid nitrogen-cooled Hamamatsu photomultiplier for steady-state and time resolved detection (300 nm - 1400 nm).
- Cryostats for temperature-dependent luminescence measurements (4 K to 110 °C, Oxford Instruments and ARS).
- Integrating spheres (Hamamatsu and PicoQuant) for absolute photoluminescence quantum yield determination (77 K and room temperature, UV-NIR).
- UV-3600i Plus UV-VIS-NIR (Shimadzu), UV-1900i (Shimadzu) double beam spectrophotometers.
- Dynamic light scattering measurements (diameter and zeta potential, Malvern Zetasizer Ultra).
- Potentiostat and electrodes for electrochemical characterization in solution (AMETEK VERSASTAT3-200 - Advanced DC Voltammetry System).
- Laser induced transient absorption and photoacoustic spectrometer with components from Edinburgh Instruments (flash photolysis spectrometer LP 980, incl. power-meters placed before and after the sample), Ekspla (pulsed tuneable nanosecond laser NT342B-10 with integrated OPO) and Quantum Northwest (custom-made temperature-controlled sample holder with piezoelectric detector and preamplifier for photoacoustic spectroscopy).
Computational chemistry:
- High-performance watercooled Workstation featuring the 64-cores / 128-threads AMD Threadripper Pro 5995wx at 4.7 GHz, 2 TB of LR-ECC-DIMM DDR4 RAM and a fast 8 TB NVMe-Raid for efficient calculations using the Orca quantum chemical package by F. Neese et al.