Our facilities
Laboratory
The 60m² laboratory creates an optimal environment for conducting state-of-the-art research for academia and industry alike.
- The indoor climate is regulated to 21 ± 2 °C and <65%RH to ensure mechanical stability of the sensitive equipment and to avoid condensation of water vapor on the optical components.
- Sensitive equipment is protected against unexpected power disruption by a 20 kVA UPS unit, guaranteeing autonomy of at least 20 minutes.
- Volatile products can be handled under a fume hood or one of the fume extraction arms, and are stored in a dedicated safety cabinet.
- Access to the building and the lab space is limited to authorized persons by means of an electronic control system. The entire building is protected by an intrusion alarm.
X-ray tomographs
We dispose of 4 complementary micro-CT systems, covering a wide range of materials, resolutions and sample sizes, and offer both testing under ambient conditions or under controlled pressure and temperature.
- Our Bruker Skyscan 1172 features a 10W X-ray source with a tunable energy level between 30 kVp and 100 kVp, a spot size of <5 μm, an 11MP 12-bit cooled CCD detector fiber-optically coupled to a scintillator and can accommodate samples up to 50 mm diameter and 100 mm height. These characteristics render the tomograph an ideal instrument for studying soils and rock samples under ambient conditions at a resolution down to a few microns.
- Our Zeiss Xradia Versa 510 (property of Total) features a 10W X-ray source with a tunable energy level between 30 kVp and 160 kVp, a 4MP 16bit deep-cooled CCD detector and a range of objectives ranging from 0,4x to 40x. This tomograph can accommodate samples up to 50 mm diameter and 100 mm height and is ideal for the multi-resolution investigation of materials under ambient and in-situ conditions.
- Our Tescan UniTOM XL features a 300W X-ray source with a tunable energy level between 30kVp and 180kVp and two detectors, a flat panel and a spectral line detector.
- Our Tescan DynaTOM features a 39W X-ray source with a tunable energy level between 30kVp and 130kVp. It is a gantry-based system, i.e. the sample does not move during the analysis.
Hard- and software
For reconstructing and analyzing the Gigabytes of data which are produced in a typical experimental run, we employ high-performance workstations (CPU/GPU) or -for larger needs- we rely on Pyrene, the >800-core computer cluster of UPPA. Long-term data storage is handled on a 48TB RAID5 storage bay, which is mirrored to an off-site location to minimize the risk of data loss in case of an accident.
To optimally respond to the imaging needs of academia and industry alike, we dispose of a state-of-the art image processing, exploration and analysis software suite, encompassing both commercial packages such as Avizo and Xlab-Hydro, as well as open-source alternatives such as imageJ and our in-house software under development based on ITK/VTK libraries.