Equipment

The group has been recently equipped with an AUTOLAB PGSTAT302N with a FRA32M module for potenciostat/galvanostat and impedance measurements. It is worth to note, that we have also acquired an Optical Bench Kit with different LED’s (green, blue and white) for coupling AUTOLAB and measuring photo-impedance for a full characterization of anode photoelectrodes.
The group has been recently equipped with an AUTOLAB PGSTAT302N with a FRA32M module for potenciostat/galvanostat and impedance measurements. It is worth to note, that we have also acquired an Optical Bench Kit with different LED’s (green, blue and white) for coupling AUTOLAB and measuring photo-impedance for a full characterization of anode photoelectrodes.
Cells and electrodes
The group has several electrochemical cells available in different volumes. We have single electrochemical cell, jacketed cells for working at high temperature, H2-cell allowing the separation of anode and cathode chambers and optoelectrochemical cells built in quartz. Also, we have several working, reference and counter electrodes with different geometries that perfectly fit to our cells.
SOFC Test Station
The SOFC Test Station allows one to perform a complete characterization of a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell. It is possible to manage the temperature, gas mixture and impedance measurements using a homemade software (Labview) that control an automata Compact Rio.

– Materials synthesis laboratory: the ACOM group has several furnaces and laboratory ovens for the synthesis of the proposed materials, able to work in air and other atmospheres from room temperature to 1700°C. The group has also a complete set of Teflon-lined stainless-steel autoclaves devoted to the preparation of nanoparticles by solvothermal synthesis.

–Structural and microstructural characterization: Concerning the structural characterization of the obtained solids, we have an X-ray Siemens D5000 diffractometer equipped with a spinner and a sample charge station allowing to measure up to 40 specimens. The thermal stability of the compounds will be studied by ATG/ATD/DSC technique in a SDT Q600 thermogravimetric analysis equipment working at different dynamic atmospheres (He, N2, O2, H2/N2, H2S/N2 and air). Further structural and microstructural characterization will be performed at XRD CAI and ICTS National Center for Electron Microscopy, respectively.

–Characterization of material properties: the group has built for several decades a singular laboratory devoted to the optical characterization of materials. Among other techniques, the members of the group have been working for some time in FTIR, UV-Vis and RAMAN spectroscopies. For these purposes, we have an UV-Vis UVIKON spectrometer, a Kr/Ar laser Spectra-Physics equipped with two Raman probe (488 and 514 nm), a Perkin-Elmer λ-900 to measure from UV to Near Infrared Reflectance spectra (190-3000 nm), a LUCI-100 industrial colorimeter, a Spectrofluorometer Fluorolog 3 equipped with a pulsed and continuous Xe lamps and phosphorescence detector (10 µs to 10 second acquisition time) for phosphorescence measurements at room temperature and at 77 K and three different IR instruments: the first, a Perkin-Elmer GX-2000 equipped with accessories to measure total, specular and diffuse reflectance; the second, a Perkin-Elmer Frontier equipped with two beam splitter (KBr an Polyethylene) 8300 cm-1 to 30 cm-1 range and finally, a Nicolet iS50 FTIR-Thermo Scientific for special requirements of low detection limits of organic pollutants. Furthermore, the ACOM group has a Methrom 746 VA Trace Analyzer voltamperometer and an atomic absorption spectrometer Thermo Scientific iCE 3000 Series for the determination of cations coming from a possible leaching of the nanoparticles used in the photocatalysist experiments. Some of these experiments will be performed in a Photolab LED365-32a photo-electro-catalytic reactor made specially by APRIA systems for our laboratory. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the pollutants will be performed by HPLC in a Jasco MD-2010/2015 equipped with a capillary column C18, 4.6 mm×250 mm×5 μm. To study catalytic properties of synthetized materials we have a Micromeritics TPD/TPR 2900. Our group has also access to the LIMIT laboratory, located at ETSIDI-UPM, for the use of an XRF Bruker S2Puma and two environmental test chambers, Discovery DY1200 and Weiss WKL, for ageing studies of copolymer-block electrodes under different temperatures and UV radiation.