William M. Keck Laboratory at Sonoma State University

The W. M. Keck Foundation, one of the nation's largest philanthropic organizations, was established in 1954 in Los Angeles by the late William Myron Keck, founder of The Superior Oil Company. The Foundation recognizes the importance of undergraduate instruction and seeks to enrich research and teaching through the support of equipment, fellowships, and basic research projects at the frontiers of science and engineering. Awards are also made to support exceptional undergraduate projects in all of the liberal arts.

Sonoma State University has recently received such an award, which opens new worlds of research on the molecular and atomic level for students, faculty, area junior colleges and high schools, and the local high tech community. The award was made specifically for the purchase of microscopes, such as scanning electron microscope (SEM), atomic force microscope (AFM), confocal microscope. The goal of the lab is to attract the North Bay high tech and biotechnology industry as well as researchers in the fields of physics, chemistry, material science, engineering, geology, geography, marine biology, conservation biology and other environmentally-related research.

The 2,430 square foot Keck Laboratory is housed in 15,000 sq. ft. of Salazar Hall, along with other labs such as Photonics, Electronics, Wireless Broadband Communications, Networking, Computer Science, and Lightwave Communications.

The Microanalysis Laboratory consists of following instruments at the present time:

• Varian VE-10 Thermal Evaporator
• Diode Sputtering System, DC/RF Sputtering System (under construction)
• Rigaku Powder X-ray Diffractometer
• Hitachi S-3000N Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM)
• Energy Dispersive X-ray Analysis (EDX) with Oxford INCA Detector
• Olympus Confocal Imaging System
• Pacific Nanotechnology Scanning Probe Microscope (SPM)
• PHI Auger Spectrometer (AES)

With the DC/RF sputtering system and thermal evaporator, we can make thin films on different substrates such as glass, Si, GaAs, sapphire, which can be subsequently probed by other instruments in the lab. In combination, we can learn and deduce growth mechanism in the formation of the sample, perform full atomic elemental analysis in the specimen, which essentially lead us to the optimization of growth of different films. We can also use these instruments to determine whether a thin film was evaporated or sputter deposited and deduce the ability of a thin film sample to withstand abrasion and predict how well it will withstand harsh chemical environments.