IMS Industrial Affiliates Program Gets Back to Normal in 2022

From the Institute of Materials Science

Just as pandemic issues began to subside and allow the IMS Industrial Affiliates Program (IAP) to return to normal, we had the added excitement of moving to Science 1. That meant packing up, moving, and unpacking dozens of our precision instruments. The new building provides much-needed space for the ever-growing laboratories at IMS, as well as and design, layout, and infrastructure to efficiently accomplish research. In addition, new state-of-theart laboratory instrumentation and new facilities, including a cutting-edge new clean room, will be added.

A significant number of new instruments have been added to IMS Core Labs in Science 1. This will improve IAP sample analysis throughput.

The Spectroscopy Lab will receive a new FTIR spectrometer; the Thermal Analysis Lab will receive a full suite of instruments including TGA, DSC, and DMTA; and the Mechanical Testing Lab will have a new universal mechanical testing system.

The REFINE Lab has a new confocal microscope, an excellent non-contact

3D surface profiler which can achieve nanometer, micrometer and millimeter resolutions while also providing vital color information.

On May 25, 2023, IAP will host its first in-person annual meeting in three years! We are very excited to once again welcome our members and partners to the UConn campus in Storrs. The annual meeting will feature presentations from UConn researchers, administrators, and faculty; tours of Science 1 facilities; and the IMS Polymer Program and Materials Science and Engineering Department joint poster session.

The IAP webinar series, which commenced during the pandemic in 2020, continues to be very well-attended. IAP plans to continue to offer these virtual learning opportunities. Look for announcements for future webinars throughout 2023.

We continue to welcome new IAP member companies: one makes cleaning fluids for electronics, medical devices and fiber optics; another com- pany supplies lasers and photonics globally for a broad range of applications. Both companies have added to the broad range of our widely diverse materials characterization projects.

IAP has continued to work with faculty in a robust way over the past year, and we believe the experience has been mutually beneficial for our partners, IAP and those faculty members. The breadth of the work runs from catalyst and surface chemistry, to polymer processing, and metal properties and failure analysis.

We are very pleased that Dr. Seth March has joined the CAMMA electron microscopy lab as a postdoctoral researcher following the retirement of Roger Ristau. This was a big void to fill, and Drs. Lichun Zhang and Haiyan Tan have delivered excellent quality and efficient results during the transition.