TEMPR Facility

Lab Location

2423 Calit2 Building

Lab Contact

Dr. Xiaofeng Liu

Emergency

9-1-1

UCI Police

(949) 824-5223

UCI Medical Center

(714) 456-6123

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TEMPR Facility

TEMPR Facility houses a broad scope of instrumentation for characterizing bulk, thin-film, chemical, composite, and biological materials with respect to their Thermal, Elemental, Mechanical, Physical, and Rheological properties.

Hiring Technical Specialists in TEMPR Lab

Technical Specialist Positions Available in TEMPR Lab

Dear all,

TEMPR Lab has helped close to 300 users since it first opened its door in 2019 and has been providing core bulk materials characterization capabilities across southern California. To better serve everyone and support its continuous expansion, TEMPR is actively recruiting specialists across all its technical areas, including thermal analysis, elemental analysis, mechanical and rheological testing, and physical measurements. For more information, please refer to https://imri.uci.edu/facilities/tempr/

Eligibility:

Postdoc, graduate, undergraduate, or other researchers from UC Irvine eager to work in TEMPR Lab with enthusiasm toward managing a lab, helping others, and/or learning in-depth knowledge of the above technical areas.

Qualifications & Responsibilities:

  • Familiar to or enthusiastic toward instrumentations and technologies in the areas of applications. Preferably with prior knowledge of advanced techniques relevant to instruments in the areas of application.
  • Commit at least four hours per week to the role duties. Available when prompted to serve as point of contact for the areas of applications while lab manager is on leave.
  • Interested in learning in-depth instrument functionalities and relevant techniques.
  • Assisting user experiments, providing training lectures, involved in lab routine maintenances, running tests as services when requested.
  • Proactive in participating in lab activities including instrument calibrations, tune-ups, troubleshooting, and other relevant tasks.
  • Work with lab manager in keeping stock of consumables and maintenance parts. Communicate with vendors concerning instrument maintenance, repair, and upgrades.

Benefits:

  • Gain in-depth knowledge of advanced instrumentations and techniques.
  • Earn instrument usage credits or competitive salary from your working hours.
  • Have your profile listed on the IMRI website.
  • Obtain free training on other IMRI instruments.
  • Work in a friendly environment and enhance your interpersonal skills.
  • Reference letter from IMRI staff for your future career.

Interested applicants please send a brief self intro in response to this ad together with a most recent CV/resume to Dr. Xiaofeng Liu (xiaofeng.liu@uci.edu).

We are looking forward to working with you in the lab.

Location & Information

TEMPR Lab is located on the second floor of the Calit2 Building in room 2423. For general inquiries and feedback, you can write to Dr. Xiaofeng Liu or submit through the Suggestion Portal on the left sidebar. For questions regarding specific techniques or instruments, please contact relevant Supporting Staff members.

Supporting Staff

Dr. Xiaofeng Liu ✉  (Lab Director)

Introduction

All instruments are open-access to users from on-campus and off-campus academic institutions, and commercial sectors. Usage is billed following standard Recharge Rates. To schedule instrument usage, please go to the NEMO Reservation System.

To gain access to the instruments and TEMPR Lab, please refer to the Become A User for general access information. Once an active IMRI account is established, you can sign-up for instrument training HERE.

We also offer staff-operated testing services to all registered users. To arrange for a test service, please go to Request Testing Service.

To include TEMPR Facility in your future grant proposal application, please refer to the General Description below. Letters of Support can be provided upon reasonable request. Research collaborations are welcome.

Click for a General Description of TEMPR Lab

The newly established TEMPR Facility in mid-2019 is a world-class shared laboratory for the physical property characterization and elemental analysis of bulk and thin-film biological, soft, and hard materials. The facility houses a suite of state-of-the-art characterization instruments capable of measuring materials’ thermal, elemental, mechanical, physical, and rheological properties.

Differential scanning calorimeter provides versatile materials phase transition measurements from -90 to 400 °C. In particular, the Discovery series DSC 2500 is equipped with a new Fusion Cell™ for high sensitivity, resolution, reproducibility, and reliability. A linear autosampler allows for worry-free 24/7 operation. Modulated DSC® technology enables efficient separation of complex thermal events. Two thermogravimetric analyzers (Netzsch TG 209 F1 Libra® and TA Instruments TGA Q500) are capable of measuring materials’ mass changes at temperatures from ambient conditions up to 1100 °C with a resolution of 0.1 μg. A simultaneous thermal analyzer NETZSCH STA 449 F3 Jupiter® allows for the measurement of both mass changes and thermal effects up to 1600 °C from a single sample run. An in-line coupled system of a Bruker ALPHA II Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and a QMS 403 D Aëolos® quadrupole mass spectrometer offers comprehensive evolved gas analysis for materials decomposition or desorption.

A combination of a TA Instruments Discovery series HR-2 hybrid rheometer, a dynamic mechanical analyzer Q800, and an Instron 3365 Universal Testing System can measure mechanical properties of soft materials, liquids, formulations, and composites by introducing force from as little as 0.0001 N up to 500 N.

A state-of-the-art Thermo Scientific™ iCAP™ RQ Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer offers ultra-trace elemental analysis at sub-ppb to ppt levels and provides elemental screening in minutes. The coupled laser ablation system with a 193 nm pulsed excimer laser allows for solid sample introduction and surface elemental profiling.

A Waters ACQUITY Advanced Polymer Chromatography (APC) system fractionates and characterizes polymers and nanomaterials with in-series coupled Wyatt μDAWN multi-angle light scattering (MALS) and Optilab UT-rEX refractive index (RI) detectors providing a fast and accurate determination of particle sizes and distributions, absolute molecular weights of polymers, and even 3D geometric features of synthetic or natural macromolecules across a broad range of molecular weights (3000 ~ 2,000,000 g/mol).

TEMPR Facility instruments are capable of performing:

Thermal Properties Measurements

Thermal analysis studies polymers, composites, foods, pharmaceuticals, inorganic, and organic chemicals. A thermal analyzer typically measures heat flow and/or weight changes as a function of temperature, time, and atmosphere. Properties characterized include melting, crystallization, glass transition, cross-linking, oxidation, decomposition, and volatilization. These measurements allow for examining end-use performance, composition, processing, stability, and molecular structure and mobility.

Elemental & Evolved Gas Analysis of Materials Composition

Elemental analysis is a process where a sample of some material (e.g., soil, waste or drinking water, bodily fluids, minerals, chemical compounds) is analyzed for its elemental and sometimes isotopic composition. Elemental analysis can be qualitative (determining what elements are present), and it can be quantitative (determining how much of each is present).

Mechanical & Rheological Properties Measurements

Mechanical properties are physical properties that a material exhibits upon the application of forces. Examples of mechanical properties are the modulus of elasticity, tensile strength (modulus), elongation, hardness, ductility, and fatigue limit.

Rheology is the study of flow and deformation of materials. Deformation and flow are referred to as strain and strain rate, respectively, and indicate the distance over which a body moves under the influence of an external force, or stress. For this reason, rheology is also considered to be the study of the stress-strain relationship of materials. A rheometer is a precision instrument that contains the material of interest in a geometric configuration, controls the environment around it, and applies and measures wide ranges of stress, strain, and strain rates.

Porosity, Surface Area, Catalyst Analysis, and Polymer Molecular Weight Measurements

Physical properties such as porosity, surface area, density, and true volume, can be measured without introducing changes to the material’s composition. Other information including catalyst performance (chemical adsorption or reaction) and polymer molecular weight distributions are also within the capability of the following instruments.