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Research Platforms

Our graduate students and post doctoral fellows have access to world-class instrumentation and research facilities hosted both in the Department and on McMaster’s campus. Key instruments available include:

Much of this infrastructure is located in central research facilities operated by the Deparment. In addition, our individual research groups have a broad range of specialized instrumentation, ranging from vacuum lines and glove boxes to an Atomic Layer Deposition reactor to equipment for GPC, HPLC, electrochemistry, thermogravimetric analysis and differential scanning calorimetry.

Students and researchers also have access to unparalleled research infrastructure on campus including the Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research (BIMR) and the BioInterfaces Institute.

The world-renowned BIMR is home to a group of related centres and laboratories devoted to materials research. These include a cryogenic characterization facility with SQUID magnetometer and physical property measurement system; the Centre for Emerging Device Technology with various deposition reactors and spectroscopic ellipsometers; and the Canadian Centre for Electron Microscopy, with its state-of-the-art SEMs, TEMs and AFMs. With this suite of instrumentation, researchers can study the nanoscale morphology, composition and properties of new materials for a broad range of applications in devices we use every day. These range from improved thermoelectric materials and batteries, to flexible nanotube-based photovoltaic devices, to thin films with applications in future computer processors.

The Biointerfaces Institute houses over $16M in advanced instrumentation in a series of shared suites. With its high throughput capacity for production, screening and characterization of new materials and surfaces, it allows for the rapid study of specific surface interactions with biological species in multiple samples. Biomaterial applications include ophthalmic biomaterials and point-of-care diagnostics.