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Physical Sciences and Engineering Division

Facilities

KAUST boasts the largest collection of best-in-class research laboratories, facilities, and equipment of any university. Students and researchers have unparalleled access to these resources, all of which will enable major scientific breakthroughs.

The Physical Sciences and Engineering (PSE) Division provides access to a number of cutting-edge facilities, including:

  • The Shaheen supercomputer, which is one of the fastest in an academic environment. Developed with IBM, it is capable of 222 teraflops, or 222 trillion floating point operations per second. It also includes:
    • A 16-rack IBM Blue Gene/P system with 65,600 independent cores
    • A 1,500-node Linux cluster with two quad-core Nehalem processors per node
    • 64 terabytes of aggregate memory capacity
    • Petaflop/s capability within the next two to three years, with scalability for future demand
  • The CORNEA visualization center, a fully immersive, six-sided virtual reality facility that turns data into 3D structures that students and researchers can interact with and examine as part of their work. Features include:
    • A Mechdyne-build VL-6 with the world’s highest resolution (100 million pixels) and brightest (10,000 lumens) visualization environments
    • 24 Quad HD Projectors, the highest native resolution (4096x2160 pixels) projectors available
    • An advanced spatial/surround sound audio system that adapts to match visual images - the only known research center of this type in the world
  • Nanofabrication laboratories and clean-room environments at KAUST are equipped to support research in advanced materials, biotechnology, electronics and photonics, and MEMS/NENS. Features include:
    • 2000 m2 Class 1000 clean room and multiple bays at Class 100
    • Confocal optical, atomic force, and electron microscopes as well as spectrometers and probe stations
    • Microsystems analyzers
    • Tools for sputtering, including chemical vapor, atomic layer, and pulsed laser disposition
    • Vibrating sample and alternating-gradient magnetometers
    • Kerr-effect and magnetic force microscopes
  • A state-of-the-art field laboratory for exploration and seismology experiments that consists of:
    • A fiber-linked network of more than 700 portable geophone stations connected to a central recording computer
    • Several transportation/recording vehicles designed for easy deployment to remote sites
  • The Reactive Flow Modeling Laboratory, which features experimental capabilities such as:
    • Stereoscopic PIV and acetone PLIF
    • Rayleigh thermometry
    • Phase Doppler Interferometry
    • Gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy
  • The Nanobiophysics Laboratory, which studies matter at the micro and nanoscale level with techniques including:
    • A total internal refraction fluorescence microscope
    • Optical tweezers to study the mechanics of stem cells adhesion on various substrates
  • The Combustion and Laser Diagnostics Laboratory, with modern equipment and facilities for  combustion diagnostics, including:
    • Planar laser-induced fluorescence (LIF)
    • Rayleigh and Raman scattering
    • Light extinction/light scattering
    • Laser-induced incandescence (LII)
    • Coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy techniques together with flow and spray measurement setups
  • The High-Speed Fluids Laboratory with state of the art instrumentation for experiments in fluid mechanics including:
    • High-speed video cameras for studying basic dynamics in two-phase flows
    • Particle Image velocimetry to obtain three-dimensional velocity fields in rapidly changing and turbulent flow fields
    • A vacuum facility to investigate the role of gas pressure
  • The Composite and Heterogeneous Materials Analysis and Simulation Environment dedicated to modeling, simulation, and inverse approaches for composite materials, including:
    • Processing facilities
    • Characterization tools (tomography and microscopy)
    • Testing facilities and simulation capabilities

The Materials Science and Engineering program also has access to the latest thin-film deposition tools, including:

  • Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) with full analysis, atomic layer deposition
  • Organic MBE with full analysis
  • Thermal, pulsed layer, plasma-enhanced chemical vapor, and metal-oxide chemical vapor deposition
  • Sputtering
  • Photovoltaic materials and device fabrication and testing
  • Microscopy
  • Focused ion beam
  • Printing capabilities for thin film processing (inkjet, roll-to-roll, screen printing, flexo, direct write, nanoimprint)
  • Laser crystallization and spectroscopy
  • Surface analysis and two-photon absorption
  • Fabrication and testing of solar cells and light emitting diodes, and thin film transistors and photodiodes
  • Magnetic characterization
  • Wet chemistry
  • High temperature processing and diffusion furnaces
  • Local electrode and laser assisted wide angle tomographic atom probes

Other research universities in the Kingdom, region, and world will link to the University’s supercomputer and laboratory facilities via the 10 gigabytes per second (Gbps) Saudi Arabian Advanced Research and Education Network (SAREN).