Unique high temperature furnaces

Description

The Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering at Aarhus University wishes to purchase a unique set of high temperature furnaces. We aim to purchase tube furnaces, three-zone tube furnaces, and a crystal growth (Bridgeman-style) furnace that will allow us to synthesize ionic, intermetallic as well as inorganic-organic hybrid compounds and grow high-quality crystals of these. Lot 1: Research problem: In order to establish the structure as well as structure-property relationships of advanced materials, the synthesis of novel materials and growth of crystals of sufficient quality for diffraction analysis (X-ray and neutron) is important. Furthermore, it is important to grow sufficiently large crystals, so that properties such as magnetization or electric or thermal transport or optical properties can be measured along specific directions of a crystal. This requires elaborate and sophisticated temperature programs and control, in time and space. For that reason we need a set of custom made furnaces, such as • tube furnaces, which are mainly used for the materials synthesis and crystal growth with controlled temperature programs in time. Here a set of high as well as medium temperature furnaces are needed; • three-zoned furnaces for materials synthesis through chemical transport and controlled growth of crystals with a time and temperature profile; • a crystal growth furnace for extremely precise control of crystal growth, particularly in time, but also space which allows to grow larger crystalline specimen for property determination. All furnaces have to meet specific requirements with respect to their dimensions (tube length and diameter) to match with customized sample environments.