Facilities

Teaching

In addition to the shared School lecture theatres in the Hamilton Institute and the Museum Building on campus the Department has several teaching facilities of its own. The Printing House contains an undergraduate experimental laboratory on the ground floor with bench facilities and equipment for approximately 50 students. It also houses a computer laboratory with provision of state of the art PC’s for 30 students.  There is also a project laboratory shared by Senior Sophister students.

Teaching facilities in Áras an Phiarsaigh include a 20 seat laboratory containing music technology application hardware and software, a smaller teaching laboratory as well as a small recording studio and an audio/video editing facility. 

The Microelectronics Technology Laboratory located in the Sami Nasr building has a class 1,000 area which contains a wet bench and two furnaces where undergraduate students can carry out experiments in the integrated circuit fabrication process under close supervision. A mask aligner, Micromanipulator test probe set-up and various microscopes are also available.

Research

There are several specialist laboratories in the Department equipped for leading edge research with some of the most up to date measurement instrumentation available. 

The Microelectronics Technology Laboratory located in the Sami Nasr Institute for advanced materials research contains several unique pieces of equipment including: a Rapid Thermal Processor for rapid thermal annealing and rapid thermal oxidation; a Probe Station for C-V measurements; a Four point  Alessi probe (Alessi Industries instrument) suitable for measurements of the resistive properties of semiconductor substrates and resistive films; a high-resolution optical microscope with x1500 magnification; a Rudolph EL-04 Ellipsometer for measurements of thickness and refractive index of thin films and a Renishaw 1000 micro-Raman system.

The Liquid Crystals Research Laboratory has facilities for wide band dielectric spectroscopy: This includes a Novocontrol System, and HP 4191A, HP 4192A, HP4291B. Three Polarising Microscopic set-ups with their own heating stages and temperature controllers. There is also a Bio-Rad FTIR 6000A FTIR spectrometer with the facility of time-resolution down to 0.1 µs and a BioRad IR microscope as well as a PerkinElmer Lambda 900 UV/Vis/NIR spectrometer (wavelength range - 175-3300 nm).

The Sigmedia Laboratory is located in Áras an Phiarsaigh and houses several types of digital video recording and playback equipment including DigiBeta, DV, VHS and Digital S machines. In addition, there are over 2TeraBytes of video storage attached to various multi-core Intel based PCs. The laboratory also has two 3CCD Canon professional DV camcorders and a High Definition (1080i) Cannon Camcorder.

Áras an Phiarsaigh also houses a small recording studio, an audio/video editing suite and facilities for work on audio acoustics and work which combines technology and the performing arts.