THE NICHOLS LAB
Equipment
Schlenk Lines
We have 7 fume hoods equipped with Schlenk Lines for air-free synthesis.
Solvent Purification System
Our solvent purification system delivers five dry and deoxygenated solvents and features direct plumbing to an adjacent glovebox.
Double Glovebox
In addition to direct plumbing of five dry solvents, our double glovebox features a feedthrough for electrochemical experiments and fiber optics plus a cuvette holder for UV-Vis spectroscopy.
Potentiostats & Electrochemical Work Stations
We have 3 potentiostats (1 BioLogic and 2 CH Instruments) along with associated workstations for gas delivery. We also have a selection of commercial and home-built gas-tight electrochemical cells for spectro-electrochemistry and bulk electrolysis.
Mass Flow Controllers
Three mass flow controllers are available to create gas mixtures on demand.
Gas Chromatograph
Our SRI Gas Chromatograph is used for headspace gas analysis, either in batch- or flow mode.
Gas-tight electrochemical cells (built in-house) enable these measurements.
Gold Sputter Coater
We make use of an in-house argon plasma sputter coater to deposit thin layers of gold for ATR-SEIRAS experiments.
Electrochemical Quartz Crystal Microbalance (eQCM)
The eQCM uses frequency modulations of an oscillating sensor surface to determine mass lost/gained as a function of applied potential. Our system is temperature controlled and appropriate for both aqueous and organic solutions
Bruker Vertex 80 FT-IR Spectrometer
This spectrometer is equipped with an MCT detector and variable angle-of-incidence accessory for ATR-SEIRAS, as well as specialized electronics for rapid-scan and step-scan experiments down to ~10 ns time resolution.
Nd:YAG Laser + OPO
A pulsed Nd:YAG laser and associated OPO enables generation of UV (355 nm) or visible (400-700 nm) light pulses to trigger time-resolved FT-IR experiments.
Purge Gas Generator
This compressor and purge gas generator system removes water and carbon dioxide from ambient air to provide a constant purge of the FT-IR optical bench.
The equipment above was generously supported through funding from the following agencies and organizations:
