August 2024 Newsletter

Welcome to the ASU Core Facilities Newsletter. We are ready to support all your research goals. Please follow our LinkedIn page for additional resources and community information.

 

Supporting sustainability efforts

In an era of significant global climate changes, developing sustainable technology has become a crucial priority. Researchers and engineers are at the forefront of creating innovative solutions to combat environmental degradation and foster a sustainable future. ASU Core Research Facilities provide invaluable resources for this scientific advancement, contributing to the future of sustainability efforts.

ASU's sustainability goals and vision.

 

Prototyping green technology

Reducing carbon emissions is crucial to combating climate change but, even with reductions, excess CO2 remains in the atmosphere. Direct air capture, a solution pioneered at ASU with support from our Instrument Design and Fabrication Core, addresses this issue. The Core developed components for Professor Klaus Lackner's prototype device, the MechanicalTree, which removes CO2 from the air.

How Carbon Collect Ltd.'s MechanicalTree is collecting atmospheric carbon.

 

The future of solar

Transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy is crucial for combating climate change. ASU scientists are advancing this shift with multi-junction solar cells, making them more efficient than traditional cells. Leveraging the Advanced Electronics and Photonics and Solar Fab Core Facilities, ASU researchers are refining this technology to achieve commercial viability.

New testing for this new tech.

The Rolston lab, conducting this research.

 

Cooling off

Surfaces like roofs, roads and sidewalks can contribute to the urban heat island effect, which worsens air pollution and heat-related health issues. Using "cool" surfaces that reflect more solar energy can help mitigate this. Researchers in ASU's School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment are utilizing Eying Materials Center spectroscopy and microscopy resources to analyze coated pavement samples to determine the efficiency of cool surfaces.

How cool pavement can affect the Urban Heat Island phenomenon.

 

Past, present, future

ASU researcher Becky Ball utilizes the sequencing capabilities of the ASU Genomics Facility to analyze Antarctic core samples. Funded by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes for Health, her work investigates factors controlling nutrient dynamics and decomposition in soils. Her lab aims to understand how deserts, like the Sonoran Desert and Antarctica, will respond to global change.

More about Becky Ball's research.

 

 

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July 2024 Newsletter

Welcome to the ASU Core Facilities Newsletter. We are ready to support all your research goals. Please follow our LinkedIn page for additional resources and community information.

 

ASU Microelectronics

 

Arizona State University is spearheading efforts to revive America’s microelectronics industry, crucial for national security and economic strength. ASU is working with industry and government entities to enhance domestic semiconductor manufacturing by expanding the talent pipeline through the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. This initiative aligns with industry needs, as advised by ASU's Microelectronics Industry Council.

Our Economic Development and Corporate Engagement and Strategic Partnerships teams will be attending the upcoming SEMICON West conference to share how we are advancing semiconductor manufacturing capabilities in the US.

 

The SEMICON West Conference

 

SEMICON West is an important microelectronics event that brings the diverse global electronics supply chain together. At the convention, attendees will address the semiconductor ecosystem’s greatest opportunities and challenges through programs highlighting Market Intelligence, Standards, Sustainability, Workforce Development, Supply Chain Management and more. Photo courtesy SEMICON West Website

How SEMI member companies are creating a stronger world.

 

ASU at SEMICON West over the years

 

Over the last 20 years, ASU has attended SEMICON West to strengthen industry relationships, learn about new technologies and meet key personnel from partner organizations. They promote new research or inventions to attract clients to our Nanofabrication Cores. Attendees connect with equipment and materials vendors for lab expansion efforts, research technological trends and support the ASU booth. ASU staff find the conference rewarding and look forward to Phoenix hosting it in 2025.

ASU staff and faculty at SEMICON West 2023.

 

Teams work together to drive ASU's microelectronics initiatives

Southwest Advanced Prototyping (SWAP) Hub

Arizona State University leads the Southwest Advanced Prototyping (SWAP) Hub, one of eight regional innovation hubs under the Department of Defense’s Microelectronics Commons. Funded by a $39.8 million DoD investment, the SWAP Hub accelerates the development and production of critical microelectronics technologies. It aims to revitalize U.S. semiconductor manufacturing by focusing on transitioning research to production and building a skilled workforce.

How ASU is leading this DoD Microelectronics Commons Hub

 

Corporate Engagement and Strategic Partnerships

The Corporate Engagement and Strategic Partnerships team creates opportunities for individualized, transformative and impactful collaborations. From enhancing workplace diversity to advancing R&D initiatives, they help organizations achieve their goals. Grace O’Sullivan, VP of Corporate Engagement and Strategic Partnerships, says the "Corporate Innovation Labs offer unique collaboration opportunities for both ASU and industry partners, providing a testbed for rapid prototype and product development."

How corporate engagement is creating partnerships to drive innovation.

 

Economic Development

The ASU Economic Development team drives business attraction, retention and expansion strategies to boost the Greater Phoenix region's economy. Leveraging ASU's significant economic impact, they promote growth through initiatives like the semiconductor processing certificate, which provides strategic training and fosters industry partnerships in the microelectronics sector.

How Economic Development is helping industry grow.

 

ASU Core Research Facilities

The ASU Core Research Facilities offer advanced tools and expertise for device processing, characterization, development and fabrication across more than 45,000 square feet of clean room space. ASU NanoFab specializes in various electronics fields, providing state-of-the-art resources for research and industry partners. The Advanced Electronics and Photonics facility bridges the gap between innovation and product development, offering comprehensive electronics design, fabrication, testing and integration capabilities in a secure environment.

How Core Facilities are advancing semiconductor R&D.

 

This year at SEMICON West

 

The ASU team will have a booth at SEMICON West from July 9 – 11 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. Join them to explore groundbreaking technologies transforming the microelectronics sector and enabling smart applications. They will be at booth 5574 by the Beer and Wine Garden to talk about the Department of Defense Microelectronics Commons and the Southwest Advanced Prototyping (SWAP) Hub, among other ASU microelectronics and semiconductor industry resources.

SEMICON West 2024 information.

 

 

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Core Research Facilities June 2024 Newsletter

 

June 2024 Newsletter

Welcome to the ASU Core Facilities Newsletter. We are ready to support all your research goals. Please follow our LinkedIn page for additional resources and community information.

 

Instrument Design and Fabrication Core Employee Highlight

 

 

The Instrument Design and Fabrication (IDF) Facility offers a wide range of services for ASU researchers, peer institutions and private industry partners. With expert staff and capabilities from our Electronics and Machine Shops, we are ready to help you accomplish your project goals.

 

Meet the IDF Team

Brian Ipema, Director

Brian Ipema manages the the Machine and Electronics Shops as the IDF Core's Operations Director. With an engineering background in material analysis, design and manufacturing, his expertise lies in scientific research and development prototyping. Brian has supported diverse organizations, from Medtronic and Intel to the DoD. He is certified in SolidWorks, among other professional certifications.

 

James Makar, Machine Shop Manager

James "Jim" Makar joined ASU in 2004, leveraging his vast experience in the semiconductor, aerospace and robotics industries to manage the IDF Core's Machine Shop. Jim finds turning initial concepts into completed projects with researchers and faculty "tremendously rewarding."

 

Daniel Saine, P.E., Electronics Shop Manager

Daniel "Dan" Saine, a registered Professional Electrical Engineer, manages the Electronics Shop. He has experience in RF, digital and analog systems. Notable projects include the International Space Station's power system, the Army FIST communications system and the first CAT scan X-ray processor.

 

Gerald Lacy, Senior Instrument Maker and Designer

Gerald "Jerry" Lacy joined ASU in 2016 as a Senior Instrument Maker Designer specializing in machining, mechanical design and assembly. His work supports research on brain injury and virus characterization. He has contributed the CXFEL and various NASA projects. Certified in SolidWorks, he brings expertise from many industries.

 

Chris Bello, Machinist

Christopher "Chris" Bello joined the IDF Core in July 2023, with a rich background as a machinist specializing in aerospace and semiconductor parts. Chris brings expertise honed through a 6400-hour apprenticeship where he earned the title of Journeyman Machinist from the National Tooling & Machining Association and the Arizona Department of Labor.

 

Mark White, Instrument Maker

Mark White joined ASU as a Machinist/Instrument Maker in 2004, leveraging 45 years of experience across semiconductor, aerospace, tool and die and agricultural and mining equipment repair. He thrives on solving complex problems and meeting the diverse functional and material demands in ASU's dynamic setting.

 

"It is also rewarding being able to work with and learn from our customers since so many of them are degreed faculty in a variety of fields and disciplines which contributes to my overall understanding of the world we live in. - Mark White

 

Brian Smith, Instrument Maker

Brian Smith has been a machinist in the manufacturing industry for 25 years, with a focus on aerospace. Brian joined ASU Instrument Design and Fabrication Core in 2016 specializing in CAD modeling and enjoys collaborating with clients on their design projects.

 

Tan Nguyen, Senior Machinist

Tan Nguyen is a Senior Machinist for the IDF Core, briniging experience from the aerospace, defense and semiconductor industries. He specializes in sketching solid model parts, programming and preparing CNC machines to create essential components for research initiatives.

 

More about the team and their successes.

 

IDF News

IDF and the ASU Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences

 

 

Brian and Dan have been working with Dr. Yvonne Sawall from ASU BIOS on an NSF-funded project studying eddies in coral reefs. The BIO-RESORT is an instrument engineered to measure the metabolic rates or marine organisms in the field. Here, we can see them as they rebuild and update the CPU for the water sampling units crucial to the BIO-RESORT's functioning.

How the water sampling units support the BIO-RESORT.

 

Employees of the IDF Core are proud to have received an ISO 9001: 2015 and AS9100D certification

 

 

Compliance to ISO 9001:2015 and AS9100D requirements is the basis for organizing and operating our quality management system.

The IDF Core "has demonstrated its commitment to world class quality by implementing and becoming certified to the ISO 9001: 2015 and AS9100D standard. They have joined an elite number of organizations worldwide who have achieved certification to this globally recognized quality standard,” said Randy Daugharthy, Vice President – Registrar at the Performance Review Institute Registrar.

New Maching Shop Equipment

The Hexagon Scan+

A versatile 900 x 1200 x 800mm Coordinate Measuring Machine, designed for detailed assessments of size and form with superior tactile scanning capabilities.

Tactile scanning enables the Scan+ to collect numerous surface points rapidly, ensuring precise form and profile evaluations for various parts. This machine integrates tactile scanning with an adaptable automatic probe head, facilitating the examination of intricate components from multiple angles.

 

 

The integrated styli changer rack enhances efficiency, allowing swift transitions between styli configurations during measurements, all without compromising the measurement scope.

More Instrument Design and Fabrication Equipment.

 

 

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Core Research Facilities April 2024 Newsletter

 

April 2024 Newsletter

Welcome to the ASU Core Facilities Newsletter. We are ready to support all your research goals. Please follow our LinkedIn page for additional resources and community information.

 

Ultrafast Laser Facility

 

 

For this month's newsletter, we're going to focus on the people that make our Ultrafast Laser Facility, part of our larger Biosciences Core, so great!

The Ultrafast Laser (UFL) Facility leads in time-resolved laser spectroscopy, using cutting-edge femtosecond and picosecond pulsed lasers with spectroscopes and microscopes. This enables real-time kinetic measurements across various wavelengths for dynamic process characterization. We specialize in advanced laser technologies for chemical, biological and materials science research, offering high spatial resolution and sensitivity, including at the single-molecule level, to meet modern research needs.

 

Meet the UFL team

 

 

Anton Khmelnitskiy, a research professional and a manager of the UFL.

Anton's research investigates ultrafast dynamics of excitation energy transfer and charge separation in both natural and artificial systems. Anton is recognized as an expert in laser spectroscopy and experimental data analysis.

 

 

Doug Daniel is a manager in the UFL and also works in the Eyring Materials Center.

Doug's area of expertise is in Raman spectroscopy, powder x-ray diffraction, microscopy and time correlated single photon counting.

 

UFL's equipment

The Ultrafast Laser Facility acquired two new advanced laser setups at the end of 2023.

 

Astrella Lasers

Known for their reliability, user-friendly operation, and integrated design that combines the femtosecond oscillator and Ti:Sapphire amplifier together with pump lasers in a single unit. Astrella lasers are built with stability and precision in mind, offering consistent performance that is critical for research applications.

 

 

Astrella is coupled to Opera, an optical parametric amplifier from Coherent, which extends the wavelength range of these ultrafast pulses well beyond fixed 800 nm, which is required for pump-probe spectroscopy of various samples. As a result, this combination can produce femtosecond pulses at wavelengths from 240 nm (UV) up to 20,000 nm (IR) seamlessly.

 

Chameleon Discovery NX

 

 

The Discovery NX is an ultrafast tunable laser with a repetition rate of 80 MHz. It delivers the highest power to address needs of users of fluorescence microscopy, time correlated single photon counting and streak camera fluorescence measurements. Additional harmonic generation setup provides gap-free, automated tuning from 330 nm to 1320 nm and the PulsSelect module allows for decreasing the repetition rate to sub KHz.

 

Transient Absorption Spectroscopy

Broadband Pump-Pulse Spectrometer

 

UFL Supports Research

 

 

Mazor Lab

In the Mazor Lab, the team uses short-pulsed lasers to examine how the structure and function of membrane complexes are related in the process of oxygenic photosynthesis. Specifically, graduate student Jin Li from Dr. Yuval Mazor's group is conducting this research in partnership with the Ultrafast Laser Facility.

 

 

Redding Lab

In the Redding Lab, graduate student Jesse Granstrom, working under Dr. Kevin Redding, has employed the HELIOS ultrafast laser spectrometer and Astrella laser. This equipment was used to investigate the rate of electron transfer within the T440V mutant of the heliobacterial reaction center, a variant known for perturbations in its iron-sulfur (FeS) or FX cluster.

 

 

Moore Lab

The Moore Lab is leveraging transient absorption methods to investigate proton dynamics in hydrogen-bonded systems. Their work is centered on understanding how protons move in response to electron transfer.

Simultaneously, the team is examining the photonic behavior of porphyrin derivatives and the potential to boost photocatalytic reactions.

Research conducted by Emmanuel Odella, Rodrigo Dominguez and Edwin Gonzalez of the Tom and Ana Moore lab in collaboration with Ultrafast Laser Facility manager Anton Khmelnitskiy.

The impact of the Moore Lab's research.

 

Publications

The PshX subunit of the photochemical reaction center from Heliobacterium modesticaldum acts as a low-energy antenna

Dr. Su Lin, formerly of the Ultrafast Laser Facility at ASU Core Research Facilities, assisted with transient absorbance experiments in this research.

 

 

Abstract

Researchers discovered a new polypeptide, PshX, in Heliobacterium modesticaldum's photochemical center that binds bacteriochlorophyll g. Using CRISPR-Cas, they created a ∆pshX strain and found that PshX functions as a low-energy antenna subunit in energy transfer.

Method

Plasmid pPB1258 was modified to include a kanamycin resistance cassette and variants pPB1322 and pPB1384 were created using Golden Gate assembly to target pshX with CRISPR. Helper plasmids pPB191 and pGO1717 were designed to facilitate these plasmids' transfer.

Results

The pshX gene, found across various Heliobacteriaceae species, suggests an ancient, conserved role, emphasizing the need for further study on its function and distribution in heliobacterial genomes.

Delve into the researchers' findings.

 

 

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ASU Research Computing hosted its first collaborative training event with the Linux Cluster Institute offering introductory level training at our SkySong facility on February 5 - 9, 2024. The Research Computing team presented technical course material while sharing knowledge and best practices during a close-knit, hands-on networking event with attendees from over 30 other universities and organizations!

What is LCI? The Linux Clusters Institute (LCI) provides education and advanced technical training for the deployment and use of computing clusters to the high performance computing (HPC) community worldwide. Founded in 1998, it includes some of the world’s foremost specialists in building and deploying clustered high-performance computing systems. LCI is the premier international forum to share information on management, administration, and advanced computing techniques for high performance computing.

Why does this event matter? This is the first LCI workshop to be hosted at ASU. With over 30 universities and organizations in attendance, this event was a huge success to not only our local high-performance computing community, but to our communities and networks worldwide. The materials from this workshop were also presented by ASU HPC System Administrators, William Dizon and Alan Chapman.

See photos here!

Which Universities or Organizations were in attendance?

Arkansas Children's Hospital
BioFrontiers Institute - University of Colorado at Boulder
Cal Poly Pomona
California State University, Fullerton
Clark Atlanta University
Converge Technology Solutions
Data In Science Technologies
East Carolina University
Guidehouse (NIH/NHLBI)
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Mississippi State University HPC²
Missouri State University
Morgan State University
University of Missouri - Columbia
Naval Postgraduate School National Center for Atmospheric Research
North Carolina A&T State University
Nova Southeastern University Florida
Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division
Purdue University
Saint Louis University
San Diego State University
SchedMD
Texas A&M University
The MITRE Corporation
University of California Santa Cruz
University of Illinois
University of Minnesota
University of South Florida
US Geological Survey
Washington University School of Medicine