etching

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.

cryo-TEM microscope rendering

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.

Outreach team

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.

nano-characterization

Staff

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

nano-scale particles

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.

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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.

Publications

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H Nemati, N Masurkar and E Dehghan-Niri (2025) Investigating Acoustic-based Foraging Behavior in Aye-ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis) Through Infrared Thermography. Int J Primatol . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-025-00498-y

Instruments: MICROCT

MI Bardot CW Weyhrich, Z Shi, M Traxler, CL Stern, J Cui, DA Muller, ML Becker, WR Dichtel (2025) Mechanically interlocked two-dimensional polymers. Science387,264-269. DOI:10.1126/science.ads4968

Instruments: SEM

SP Zack, KD Rose and MA O'Leary (2025) New Cranial and Postcranial Remains of the Once Enigmatic Early Eocene Mammal Wyolestes (Mammalia, Ferae, Hyaenodonta) from North America, and Phylogenetic Evidence for its Interordinal Relationships. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 475: 1-80.

Instruments: MICROCT

SMIF in the News

News Archive »
Jacob Peloquin, a recent PhD graduate and aiM program participant who is now a faculty member at NC State, looks at the internal structures of smashed 3D-printed cubes.

| Pratt School of Engineering News

How AI is Rewriting the Rules of Materials Discovery