CSE - SCSAM (Case School of Engineering - Swagelok Center for Surface Analysis of Materials) is CWRU’s (Case Western Reserve University’s) facility for microcharacterization of materials. SCSAM is a multi-user facility offering a suite of instrumentation for materials characterization and surface and near-surface chemical analysis. SCSAM’s facilities are available to all faculty, research staff, and student users on the CWRU campus and also to external academic, non-profit, and industrial users at standard hourly use charges. The equipment described here is maintained by SCSAM’s Executive Director and four engineers with graduate degrees and/or extensive experience. The staff and service contracts for the instruments are supported by user fees, augmented by income from a dedicated endowment and support from the Case School of Engineering. The following subsections describe SCSAM’s instrumentation:

• Scanning Electron Microscopy

  • FEI Helios NanoLab 650 Dual-Beam Focused Ion Beam/SEM System (Acquired 2010)

  • ThermoFisher Apreo 2S SEM (NSF MRI Award: 2018167, Installed May 2021)

    • Hummingbird Continuous Flow Liquid Holder/Electrochemical Cell (NSF MRI Award: 2018167, Acquired May 2022)

• Transmission Electron Microscopy

  • Remote Access Console to ThermoFisher/FEI TEMs at Ohio State University Center for Electron Microscopy and Surface Analysis (CEMAS) (Installed September 2021)

    • Tecnai G2-30 

    • Titan 60-300

    • Themis Z S/TEM

• Surface Analytical Capabilities

  • PHI VersaProbe Scanning XPS Microprobe (Acquired 2007)

  • PHI NanoTOF Time-of-Flight Secondary-Ion Mass Spectrometer (Acquired 2009)

• X-Ray Fluorescence

  • Bruker Tracer 5g portable XRF (Installed October 2023)

• X-ray Diffraction

  • Rigaku SmartLab Multi-Purpose XRD System (Installed January 2024)

• Optical Microscopy 

  • Keyence VR-6200 3D Optical Profilometer (Installed October 2022)

  • Keyence VHX-5000 Optical Microscope  (Acquired 2016)

• Atomic Force Microscopy

  • Veeco Dimension 3100 Atomic Force Microscope

• Nanoindentation

  • Agilent G2000 Nanoindenter

• Sample Preparation

  • Denton Desk V Turbo-Pumped Sputter Coater (Installed March 2023) 

  • Gatan Illion Ion Polisher

  • Struers Tegramin-25 Polishing System (Acquired 2016)

Each year more than 150 individual researchers from the academic, non-profit, and commercial sectors recognize the advantages and benefits that SCSAM delivers. From students, startup enterprises, and prominent industrial businesses, SCSAM is mindful of our client's requirements and partners with them to efficiently extract valuable and informative data.