Maintaining expensive instrumentation by individual departments and faculty has proven to be a financial burden and often an administrative burden for everyone involved. The Rice Shared Equipment Authority (SEA) service center was created to relieve individual departments and faculty from these concerns by hiring technicians for training, maintenance and general operations and also by providing administrative support for the users and faculty involved. The RiceSEA provides an integrated collection of sophisticated research equipment to be utilized by Rice faculty and students as well as external users. The SEA is a faculty committee which reports to the Deans of Natural Sciences and Engineering and to the Provost, but the Smalley Institute has been asked to take the responsibility for the oversight of SEA fiscal and space issues on behalf of the Deans and the Provost.
The RiceSEA includes a broad range of different instrumentation:
Microscopes—2 AFMs, a JEOL 2010 TEM, an ESEM, a JEOL SEM 6500F, SEM 5300, Polarizing Microscope, Raman Microscope
Thermal equipment—TGA-IR, TGA-MS
Spectroscopy—FTIR and 2 NMRs (coming in early July 2003)
Preparation and separations—HPLC, LEO Ebeam, Sputter Coating, Spin Coater, Wire Bonder, Field Flow Fractionation, Ultramicrotome
X-ray diffraction—Gadds, Powder, D-5000
For more details on these instruments or to sign up on the on-line calendar for use of these instruments please visit our website at www.ricesea.org.
