Lab Tour — Shatruk Research Group

Take a virtual tour of our labs and listen to Prof. Shatruk discussing our research projects and the skills that students acquire in the group.

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Synthesis

Schlenk Lines

Preparing liquid nitrogen for Schlenk line traps. Our Schlenk lines enable air-free synthesis and manipulation of oxygen- and moisture-sensitive compounds.

Glovebox

Weighing air-sensitive elements inside one of four lab gloveboxes. Our inert atmosphere gloveboxes maintain oxygen and moisture levels below 1 ppm.

Glovebox Operations

Preparing to remove compounds from a glovebox. We have multiple gloveboxes for different synthesis and characterization needs.

Arc-Melting

Melting a sample in the high-temperature synthesis glovebox. Arc-melting allows us to synthesize intermetallic compounds at extremely high temperatures.

Tube Sealing

Sealing a sample in a tube under vacuum to keep oxygen out of a reaction. Sealed tube reactions enable synthesis at controlled atmospheres and high temperatures.

Induction Furnace

A sample being heated through induction (also known as RF melting). Induction heating provides rapid, controlled heating for high-temperature synthesis.

Crystallography

$Single-Crystal Diffractometer$

Single-Crystal Diffractometer

Mounting a crystal on the Bruker single-crystal diffractometer (Departmental access). This instrument provides atomic-resolution structural information.

$Powder Diffractometer$

Powder Diffractometer

Mounting a sample for powder X-ray diffraction on the Panalytical (Departmental access). PXRD allows us to identify phases and assess sample purity.

$Rigaku Diffractometer$

Rigaku Single Crystal Diffractometer

Collecting a crystal structure on the brand-new Rigaku single crystal diffractometer (Departmental access). State-of-the-art instrumentation for crystallographic studies.

Magnetism

SQUID Magnetometer

Loading a sample into the SQUID (Departmental access). The Superconducting Quantum Interference Device magnetometer measures magnetic properties with exceptional sensitivity from 1.8 to 400 K.

Spectroscopy

Low-Temperature UV-Vis Spectrometer

Loading a sample into the Cryo-UV-vis spectrometer. This instrument enables optical spectroscopy measurements at cryogenic temperatures to study electronic transitions and photoswitching phenomena.

Theory

Density Functional Theory

Performing DFT-based calculations. We use computational methods to predict and understand electronic structure, magnetic properties, and chemical bonding in functional materials.