Facilities and equipment

We host a suite of premier research laboratories, instruments, facilities, and equipment, as well as the Science Faculty Technical Workshop and optics research facilities.

Research equipment

As well as the Faculty of Science's facilities and equipment, the School's research equipment includes:

  • A clean room complex equipped with advanced instrumentation for materials fabrication, characterisation and analysis including focused ion beam microscopes, UHV AFM/STM scanning probe system, UV Raman spectrometer, and a pulsed laser deposition system
  • A particle detector development and construction facility comprising clean rooms, precision wirebonder detector development, assembly and evaluation capabilities.
  • Advanced X-ray, laser, microscopy and atom optics laboratories
  • A 5 MV Pelletron accelerator providing a source of MeV ion beams in 5 beamlines used in nuclear microprobe systems

Optics research facilities

For information relating to these facilities, please contact: Prof Robert Scholten, r.scholten@physics.unimelb.edu.au
Tel + 61 3 8344 5457.

    • Mechanical workshops
      High-tech design, prototyping, precision machining, computer-controlled milling and turning, wire-cutting, inert-gas welding.
    • Electronics workshops
      Design and prototyping, analogue and digital.

    • Coherent 899-21 single-frequency ring laser, with Ti:sapphire and dye gain media
    • Coherent Sabre 10 watt argon ion pump laser
    • 500 mW 780nm tapered amplifier semiconductor laser
    • NewFocus 10mW 780nm tunable diode laser
    • 100 mW Frequency doubled Nd:YAG
    • 100 mW Argon ion
    • 25W CO2 laser
    • Diode lasers and controllers (many)
    • He-Ne lasers

    • Stable CE-certified high-frequency 18 kW, 60 kV rotating anode source
    • 5 micron spot size, 160 kV, Feinfocus X-ray source
    • Other medium and soft X-ray sources
    • High Vacuum systems
    • State-of-the-art curved crystal Johann spectrometer
    • State-of-the-art 2D Backgammon X-ray detector
    • Double-flat crystal monochromators and analysers
    • A variety of detectors including X-ray CCD cameras, Si-PIN detectors
    • Scintillators, and X-ray photographic cameras

  • Please email Prof Robert Scholten for more information.

    • 12-bit and 16-bit visible and x-ray CCD cameras
    • Olympus microscopes

    • Lock-in amplifiers
    • Spatial light modulators
    • Oscilloscopes
    • Burleigh 7-digit wavemeter
    • Optical spectrum analysers
    • Optical power meters

    • DEC Alpha workstations
    • Personal computer
    • Black and white and colour PostScript printers
    • 4mm tape drive
    • 650MB magneto-optical disk drive

Other services and facilities

Student services

A wide range of services is available to students at the University, including the Physics Students' Society (PSS) and Postgraduate Physics Students’ Society (PPSS).

IT support

IT support is available, including getting started, how to purchase hardware, requesting online support, news and alerts, storage and backup, and policies.

Research Reading Room

The Physics Research Reading Room is located on the 6th floor of the David Caro Building.