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The main facility is a mechanically cooled cryostat, capable of
stable operation at temperatures from below 3 K to room temperature.
Cooling is provided by a G-M (Gifford McMahon) cooler, and a sample
space of up to 40 cm high by 20 cm diameter is available. Optical access
is possible through four windows, and a cooling time as low as one hour
is possible (for small samples).
A helium-3 sorption cooler, with an operating temperature of around 300 mK, allows access to the ultra-low temperature range. Other equipment at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh is also available. This includes various liquid nitrogen, helium and mechanically cooled cryostats operating at temperatures of 4 K and higher (sample space up to 1.5~m x 1.5~m), general equipment for cryogenic operation such as leak detectors, and several clean rooms for component assembly. Other equipment in Glasgow is available through TEOPS for activities such as characterising the surface properties of materials. |
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