CERCA GINYS

Chemistry laboratory

Freeze-drying of plant and soil samples.
Chemical extractions of plant material and soils
Spectrophotometry.
Storage of chemical reagents.

Microscope, optics and precision balance laboratories

The installation is equipped with two precision scales for maximum precision in weight; a double oil immersion optical microscope equipped with a camera; and an inverted microscope, which, for example, the paleobiology research group is using to analyze phytoplankton and zooplankton in sediment nuclei extracted from clear water. Observation, separation and identification of aquatic organisms phytoplankton, diatoms, chrysophytes and soil organisms.

Animal experimentation and optics laboratory

Observation, separation and identification of insect and plant samples under the stereoscopic.

Materials for Energy Labs

The Materials for Energy Labs have fully equipped laboratories for the synthesis and characterization of a wide variety of materials, and for the manufacturing and testing of energy conversion and storage devices. IREC is a center of excellence in the field of energy including, among others, photovoltaic energy, electrochemical and chemical energy storage, the generation of synthetic fuels, hydrogen and fuel cells and hence, the Materials for Energy Labs provide valuable support to various academic and industrial entities of public and private nature in various fields of research and development.

UEM – Mass spectrometry unit

The Mass Spectrometry Unit (MSU) aims to be a benchmark in the determination of emerging chemical pollutants in wastewater, natural water and drinking water.
By using technologically advanced instrumentation it offers analytical solutions for the identification and quantification of worldwide relevant organic contaminants at trace levels.
The MSU splits in two subunits according to the chromatographic technique coupled to mass spectrometry:

1) The Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry Unit (UEM GCMS) focuses its activity on the identification and quantification of organic compounds belonging to different families, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, disinfection by-products, etc., through multiresidue methodologies.
The availability of state-of-the-art equipment allows to face the challenges that arise in environmental topics, both from the point of view of sensitivity and monitoring of new emerging pollutants.

2) The Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry Unit (UEM LCMS) is highly specialized in target analysis of organic contaminants in aqueous samples using multiresidue analytical methods. Our catalogue includes more than 150 compounds such as drugs, antibiotics, pesticides, endocrine disruptors, etc.
It also offers a new service for non-target analysis throughout Liquid Chromatography coupled to High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (LC-HRMS).

Clean room

White Room for Detector / Chip Packaging
The IFAE’s chip packaging room allows all the necessary operations to be carried out to produce detectors and to attach them to the necessary reading chips or electronic boards. The clean room is made up of three areas with different qualities: two of about 12 m2 of class 1000 and 10000, respectively, and another of about 20 m2 of class 100000.

Laboratory to test newly constructed instruments before sending them to experimental sites (CERN, ORM, JPARC, CTIO, EGO, etc.)

Shielded room

We have a screened room of 30 m2 with capacity to make large instrument pots in an environment of low electronic noise

xG Programmable network testbed

ADRENALINE testbed ®

Experimental research testbed on high-performance and large-scale intelligent optical transport networks

The ADRENALINE testbed® is an SDN/NFV packet/optical transport network and edge/core cloud platform for end-to-end 5G and IoT services.

It allows researchers, system vendors and operators to evaluate, experimentally in conditions close to production systems, all aspects related to cloud computing in distributed environments with multiple geographically split data centers, while jointly managing storage, computing and networking resources, integrating all aspects involved in the processes of service and resource orchestration

EXTREME testbed ®

System level testbed featuring IP mobility

EXTREME ® (Experimental Testbed for Research Enabling Mobility Enhancements) is a multi-purpose fully reconfigurable networking testbed that serves to validate proposals on close-to-real scenarios.

EXTREME ® combines the ease of management of multi-user experimental facilities with the flexibility of proof-of-concept testbeds. It supports both cellular and mesh/ad-hoc network topologies by means of technologies such as 802.11 Wireless LANs or UMTS.

Archaeobotanical laboratories

The laboratory associated with the Archaeobotany unit includes the equipment and material needed for the processing and assembly of pollen and phytolith samples. The unit also has a cold room for the conservation of sedimentary cores and a dirty area where washing and flotation of small volumes for the recovery of carbonized materials can be performed.

The Archaeobotany laboratory also houses the reference collections of pollen, wood and charcoal, as well as the materials needed for its preparation (microtome, stove, oven, etc.). In addition, we have optical microscopy equipment, reference atlases for the study of pollen and charcoal and access to Tilia software, specific for the processing of paleobotanical data.

Geoarchaeology laboratory

The 85 m2
laboratory has specific machines and equipment for the complete preparation of
thin plates for petrological studies and large-format plates for
micromorphology and soil studies. It is also equipped with petrographic
microscopes.

This facility has been set up to prepare the thin sections of rocks and
sediments required to conduct the Institute’s archaeological research.