Opened 2014 and LEED Gold Registered, the Science Education and Research Center, is home to seven research centers, teaching and research labs and collaborative spaces to foster discover and innovation. 

• Low-vibration scanning tunneling microscope facility 
• Class 100 and Class 1000 clean rooms, where the concentration of airborne particles is controlled to specified limits
• Variable air volume capabilities to control air pressure in each lab
• Groundwater monitoring wells for student instruction and region-wide projects

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CST hosts centralized instrumental to support faculty research efforts, including:

Bruker APEX II DUO X-ray Diffractometer 
The Bruker APEX II DUO X-ray diffractometer is designed for structural determination of single crystals of small molecules (typically less than 500 non-hydrogen atoms). The diffractometer combines a molybdenum X-ray source for high throughput and charge density experiments, and a copper source for absolute configuration and protein screening. The APEX2 softwarehas a graphical user interface that guides the user through the complete experiment and analysis, from data acquisition through data collection, integration and scaling to structure solution and refinement and report generation.

Bruker D8 Discover 
The Bruker D8 Discover X-ray diffractometer is optimized for determination of thin film structures. Common applications include grazing-incidence XRD(GIXD), X-Ray Reflectivity (XRR), X-ray rocking curve analysis, reciprocal space maps, texture (pole figure) and residual stress analysis. The D8 Discoverdiffractometer can also be reconfigured for small-angle X-ray scattering applications.

JEOL JEM-1400 Transmission Electron Microscope 
The JEOL JEM-1400 is a 120kV class TEM equipped with STEM units and an EDS analyzer. It is suitable for biological, polymer and materials science applications. The TEM offers high resolution (0.2 nm) and high contrast imaging capabilities and the STEM/EDS offer point analysis (2.0 nm) and elemental mapping capabilities. The instrument comes with a standard sample holder for routine measurements at room temperature, a liquid nitrogen transfer holder for CRYO-TEM, and a heating holder that allows the direct observation of microstructural phase changes, nucleation, growth and dissolution processes.

The Biological Safety Labs Level 3 (BSL3) is a certified bio-containment research facility, located in the Bio-Life Sciences Building, is a high-containment facility that supports sponsored researchers using various pathogenic materials. Learn more. 

Owl’s Nest is the latest Linux cluster for high-performance computing. It was procured and assembled in 2017. It features 180x new dual-socket compute nodes with 28 cores and 128GB of RAM each. Research with larger memory requirements will benefit from 6x 512GB, 6x 1.5TB and 2x 3TB RAM machines. In addition, each 512GB box also hosts two NVIDIA P100 GPUs. An EDR InfiniBand (100Gb/s) fabric is used as interconnect.

In November 2018 the cluster was further extended with 48 more dual-socket compute nodes with 16 cores and 96GB of RAM each. In total, Owl’s Nest currently hosts 6,464 CPU cores, providing about 57 million service units (CPU core hours) per year. All of this is backed by a new 1.5PB parallel storage which hosts all user data and is shared across the entire cluster. For large public (read-only) data sets, there is an additional 0.5PB storage. Learn more

The Research and Instructional Support Facility (RISF) provides machining, technical design and consulting services to the College of Science and Technology and Temple University researchers. A student machine shop located adjacent to the main facility allows students to use basic shop tools to support their work after taking a required shop introduction and safety program. Learn more.

One of the most comprehensive Scanning Electron Microscopes, the FEI Quanta 450FEG SEM, equipped with the latest Energy Dispersive Spectrometer (Oxford Aztec Energy Advanced EDS System) is housed in the College of Engineering. These Nanotechnology tools address the need to investigate a wide variety of materials and characterize structure and composition. The lab aims to enhance the education, collaboration, research, and outreach related to all aspects of electron probe instrumentation, techniques and applications. The facility is multi-user and cross-departmental—open to any qualified scientist to use, with our qualified microscopist and material scientist Dmitriy Dikin offering training and technical support.

KEY FEATURES: 

• High resolution FEG-SEM with ESEM technology
• SE and BSE imaging in every mode of operation allowing for characterization of conductive and non-conductive samples 
• Low vacuum and ESEM capability enables charge-free imaging and analysis of non-conductive and/or hydrated specimens allowing for minimized sample preparation 
• Capable of EDS analysis on conductive and non-conductive samples in high and low vacuum
• Imaging with beam deceleration mode to get surface and compositional information from conductive samples
• Easy to use, intuitive software makes highly effective operation possible for novice users
• Possible additions: Perform dynamic in situ analysis of samples in their natural state above or below ambient temperatures from - 165 °C to 1000 °C with specialized in situ stages. High resolution bright and dark field imaging of thin slices of materials by scanning transmission electron detector (STEM). In situ mechanical and electrical measurements.

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The Micro Data Center (MDC) is centralized computing facility with stable and accessible IT infrastructure to support specific instructional and computational research efforts within the College of Science and Technology.  Learn more. 

Established in 2008 in the Bio Life Building, the  1,200 square-foot space contains 8 double-sided six-shelf zebrafish housing units. For flexibility of use, standard Aquaneering racks were widened and equipped with double gutters, allowing us to mix and match tanks freely on both sides of each unit.

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