Acquisition of a Comprehensive High Temperature and High Purity Glove Box Materials Processing Facility for Education and Research

Iowa State University, Ames IA

Investigators

Abstract

This grant provides support for the acquisition of a comprehensive high temperature and high purity glove box materials processing facility for education and research at Iowa State University. One of the most significant changes in the development of new materials is the sophistication in the processing of the materials. Modern materials are now being designed at the atomic level and precise control of the composition, structure, and impurities are allowing new materials to be fabricated with exceptional properties and performance. Several current projects critically depend upon the clean, dry, and oxygen-free environment afforded by a high quality glove box system. This new state-of-the-art glove box preparation system will dramatically improve the quality, purity, and structure of the materials. This project has significant intellectual merit in that the new glove box system will be used by ~ 8 different research groups across the Midwest on a wide variety of projects. This multi-purpose glove box will enable new fast ion conducting glasses to be prepared that have exceptional conductivities, new photonic band gap materials will be processed with never before possible structures, new transparent conducting oxides will be prepared with exceptionally purity, new ferroelectric materials will be processed at exceptional purity so that the details of the micro-failure can be examined, new ultraphosphate glasses will be prepared that will enable new insights into the frequency dependence of the ionic conductivity, and finally a new class of polymeric materials will be processed with unprecedented levels of functionality. This project has significant broader impact due to the high level of undergraduate and graduate student use of the glove box processing system. Nearly all students in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at ISU will use the glove box system and it will form a core research facility. Undergraduate research groups at nearby undergraduate institutions, Coe College and Creighton University, and as a Midwest Regional Facility by research groups at the University of Indiana and the University of Missouri-Rolla, will benefit, among others