Our Research

The Institute for Superconducting and Electronic Materials (ISEM) is located in the state-of-the-art Australian Institute for Innovative Materials (AIIM) Facility at the University of Wollongong’s Innovation Campus.

ISEM’s facilities include six laboratories with a floor space of 400m2 for processing and characterisation of high temperature superconducting and energy storage materials; materials processing and a full range of materials characterisation equipment.

The AIIM Facility is expanding to build Australia’s first materials processing and devices facility which will allow research to scaled-up to bridge the gap to commercialisation. The AIIM Facility will not only be able to tackle some of the world’s most challenging problems but it will be able to develop the processes and devices needed to help transform research into reality.

The facilities available to ISEM include a world-class battery testing facility with the capacity to test industrial scale batteries according to national standards and a high temperature superconducting laboratory for the fabrication of prototyping devices.

The AIIM Facility will also house a purpose-built electron microscope facility containing powerful tools for microstructural and chemical analysis.

The new facilities at AIIM are expected to be operational in 2011.

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AIIM Facility online equipment booking system

Equipment bookings at the AIIM Facility can be made using the AC Lab Booking System. 

If you have not used the facilities before or do not have an account please complete the Registration Form and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

For further information regarding equipment booking please contact Dr Germanas Peleckis on extension 5728 or via email at peleckis@uow.edu.au.

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Equipment

Fabrication

Freeze drier, spray drier	Rolling mills
Swagging machine	Box furnace 1700°C ±1°C
Multi-zone tube furnaces 1200°C ±1°C	Multi-target pulsed laser deposition system
Powder mills (agate/zirconia)	Drawing bench (8 m)
Uniaxial cold pressing to 10 t	Controlled atmosphere glove box
Melt spinning	High vacuum furnace
Dip-coater	Single crystal growth
Spark plasma sintering (SPS)	Pulse-laser deposition (PLD)
Micro-fabribacation equipment: Spin coater WS-400B-6NPP/Lite Exposure unit kinsten KVB-30D UV Mask aligner karl suss MJB3 Maskless laser lithography system Optical microscopy Nikon LV100 Multipurpose digital thermosonic wire bonder

Chemical Characterisation

DTA/TG 1100°C	SEM with EDS
FEG-SEM with EDS	TEM 200 kV with EDS
Vista MPX axial simultaneous ICP-AE spectrometer	X-Ray diffractometer (XRD)
Thin film characterisation by ellipsometry	Pressure–composition–isotherm measurement system (PCI)
Pfeiffer vacuum mass spectrometer (MS)

Physical Characterisation

PPMS 2-400 K 0-9 T DC field	PPMS 2-400K, 0-14T field
Scanning tunneling microscope	DC superconducting magnet 0-8T
DC power supplies 0-875 A range	Amplifiers, function generator, oscilloscope
Battery charge/discharge	Atomic force microscopy (AFM)
Multi-channel data collection systems	Particle size analyser 0.05-900 µm
NOVA 1000 high speed gas sorption analyser	NOVA gas pycnometer for density measurements
VSM 2-400 K 0-12 T DC field	Magneto-optical imaging, 12K-300K, 0T-0.3T
2 electromagnets 0-4 T	6 digital multimeters down to nV range
Cryogenic system 2-475 K	Impedance analyser
Eddy current generator	Magnetic property measurement system (SQUID), 2-400K, 0-5T DC field
N2 gas compatibility Single & multi point BET	Horizontal field superconducting magnet, 0-8T, 5-300K
Dielectric measurement system	Piezoelectric evaluation system (aixPES) and ferroelectric thin film system

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The following Institutions and Chief Investigators have been involved with the ARC RIEF proposals. The support and participation of these researchers is sincerely appreciated.

University of Queensland, (Prof DR Mackinnon)
RMIT, (Prof PJK Paterson)
CSIRO, (Dr N Saviddes, Dr K Müller) 
University of NSW, (Profs G. Russell, C Grantham, Dr B Gleeson, R. Ramer)
ANSTO, (Dr ER Vance)
Australian National University, (Dr M Das)
University of Melbourne, (DN Jamieson)
Griffith University,(Dr S Myhra) 
Curtin University (Prof DY Li and Dr I Low)
Queensland University of Technology, (Dr PD Killen)
University of Technology, Sydney, (Profs J Smith and JN Bell)
James Cook University (Prof. J. Mazierska)