— The Lab

See what we are capable of

In-house lab equipment

A capable thermogravimetric analysis system with an operating range of 50 to 1500 C and compatibility with inert, oxidizing, and reducing gases.

Physisorption measurements are used to evaluate the porosity and uptake of gases on our catalytic materials.

Ex situ/in situ/operando FTIR spectra are measured under relevant gas flow conditions.

Ex situ/in situ/operando UV-VIS spectra are measured under relevant gas flow conditions.

A house built, vertical flow reactor with mass flow control, pulse and vapor titrations, and an oxygen/water scrubbing polishing bed.

A 2″ quartz tube furnace allows pretreatment of large quantities of catalyst under positive flow or vacuum up to 1200 C.

Several programmable ramp/hold furnaces are used to pretreat catalyst or for solvothermal synthesis of MOFs and zeolites.

A workhorse system for powder crystallites such as MOFs and zeolites is found in the Imaging and Chemical Analysis Laboratory (ICAL) at MSU: https://physics.montana.edu/ical/about/instrumentation/index.html

We use scanning electron micrsocopy to visualize our crystals and quantify their chemical composition using energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) in ICAL: https://physics.montana.edu/ical/about/instrumentation/index.html

Critical point drying can be a crucial step for MOF activation. We use the dryer in ICAL: https://physics.montana.edu/ical/about/instrumentation/index.html

We implement an HF-free digestion method for our zeolite samples prior to chemical analysis using a microwave digester found in the Environmental Analytical Lab (EAL): https://physics.montana.edu/ical/about/instrumentation/index.html

The EAL handles the ICP-OES measurements after we digest the samples: https://www.montana.edu/eal-lres/instrumentation/ICP_OES.html