Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility

Cleanroom

A variety of lithography, deposition, and etching tools in the SMIF cleanroom enable micro- and nano-scale fabrication of electronics, optics, microfluidics, metamaterials, and more! SMIF can facilitate your research and development fabrication needs.

Staff

SMIF staff hold expertise across a wide range of fields and will help you with your nano-characterization and fabrication needs.

Outreach

SMIF Outreach Team visits classrooms, hosts lab tours, and let kids play with expensive equipment (supervised!). It’s SMIF’s way of showing them how fun and fascinating STEM can be.

Characterization

SMIF’s characterization tools help visualize and analyze samples at the micro- and nano-scale. SMIF facilitates investigation of a variety of sample types with a wide array of equipment: SEM, TEM, Mass Spec, Micro-CT, Optical Spectroscopy, AFM, along with Soft Materials and X-ray Characterization Equipment.

Cryo-TEM

SMIF’s state-of-the-art cryo-TEM microscopes allow the analysis of biological samples under cryogenic conditions, enabling the determination of high-resolution 3D structures.

The Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility (SMIF) at Duke University is an interdisciplinary, shared resource open to Duke University researchers from all schools and departments—as well as to users from other universities, government laboratories and industry.

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Publications

Arnal, M., R. F. Kay, L. A. Valdivia, W. Salenbien, P. E. Morse, M. R. Borths, B. A. Williams, C. Riddle, J.-N. Martínez and L. A. Gonzales (2026). New Early Miocene hystricognath rodents (Caviomorpha) from the Madre de Dios River in the southeastern Peruvian Amazon. Papers in Palaeontology 12(2): e70064.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/spp2.70064

Instrument used: MicroCT

Grant, E., K. Hoang, J. Li, S. Atta, Z. Li, J. Zhou, G. Kantor, C. Akpan, T. Vasse, W. Lee and T. Vo-Dinh (2026). Spikey nanorattle-based SERS biosensors for direct detection of cancer-associated mRNA, Proc. SPIE 13843, Optical Biopsy XXIV: Toward Real-Time Spectroscopic Imaging and Diagnosis, 138430H (5 March 2026); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3106807

Instrument used: TEM

Heckman, M. M., C. S. Cai, A. Kalpattu, E. M. Simmons, R. M. Tighe and C. K. Payne (2026). Lipid adsorbed on the surface of nanomaterials enhances protein corona formation. Environmental Science: Nano 13(4): 2112–2122.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D5EN00971E