Linking Utah's Innovation Community
The Porter group currently has laboratory and office space in the University of Utah’s Research Park. Our space is located in a new building that the University recently purchased, originally equipped for the pharmaceutical industry. The building maintains a central water conditioning facility, individual point-of-use water polishing units, compressed air, a minimal machine shop, and a 10,000 gallon liquid nitrogen reservoir. In addition to the equipment used for general organic and inorganic synthesis, nanoparticle synthesis, thin film preparation, self assembled monolayer assembly and characterization, nominal lithographic capabilities, instrumentation in our group also includes:
2 custom built micromagnetic test stations (Physik Instrumente XYZ translation stage, Navitar 12x optical zoom system, nanovoltmeter, ammeter, Kepco 400-W current source, Stanford Research Systems Lock-in-Amplifier, HP spectrum analyzer)
2 Agilent 1200 HPLC units
Hewlett-Packard GCMS
Alltech HPLC column packer
Olympus bright/dark field microscope
2 Veeco scanning probe microscopes, capable of STM, AFM, EFM, MFM
Concurrent multi wavelength Raman Nanoprobe spectrophotometer with microscope and charge-coupled device (CCD) camera
Olympus metallurgical epifluorescence microscope with CCD camera and micromanipulators
laser and optics for surface interferometry studies
Nicolet Fourier transform infrared spectrometer with specular and diffuse reflection accessories, polarization modulator, and thin layer cells for in situ surface characterizations
Perkin Elmer UV-Vis spectrophotometer (transmission and reflection)
Electronic network analyzer for microbalance techniques
Gauss meter
Malvern zeta potential instrument
syringe pumps
optical ellipsometer
surface profilometer
2 vapor deposition units
3 biological incubators
several biological shaker and rocking stations
high speed centrifuge
ultra centrifuge, complete with rotors
Narishige capillary puller
fiber optic sensor technologies
sensor test equipment
several computer-controlled potentiostats and galvanostats
computer aided design systems
grinding and lapping equipment
drill press
milling station
In addition to the facilities overseen by the Porter group, there are three core facilities housed in our building: Mass spectrometry, cell culture, and microscope facilities. Additionally, at the group’s disposal are several -80°C and -20°C freezers, a walk-in cold room, a darkroom, and an autoclave and automated glass washing facility. In addition to our internal facilities, the department of Chemistry also houses NMR and mass spectrometery facilities, a glassblowing shop, a machine shop, and an electronics shop overseen by dedicated staff.