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.

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.

Staff

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

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

McKeown Wessler, G. C., T. Wang, C. Brown, G. J. Graf, Y. Yao, A. Singh, V. Blum and D. B. Mitzi (2026). Hydrothermal Synthesis and Electronic and Optical Characterization of Ag2(NH4)AsS4. Inorganic Chemistry.

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.inorgchem.5c04606

Instruments used: DSC, FTIR, SEM, XRD

Pakharukova, N., B. N. Thomas, H. Bansia, L. Li, D. K. Bassford, R. R. Abzalimov, J. Kim, A. W. Kahsai, B. Pani, K. Xiao, R. Ochakovski, S. Liu, X. Zhang, S. Ahn, A. des Georges and R. J. Lefkowitz (2026). Mechanism of beta-arrestin 1 mediated Src activation via Src SH3 domain revealed by cryo-electron microscopy. Nature Communications 17(1).

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69884-1

Instrument used: CryoTEM

UVVIS: Xie, W., Y. Deng, Y. Liu, Y. Zhao, S. J. Shin, K. Brown, Y. Wang, N. Peng, M. Gilbert, B. Davis, A. Shankar, P. Biradar, L. Zhang, A. Zhang, H. Weisbecker, Y. Wu, Y. Wang, S. Liu, J. Tian, A. J. M. Miller, J. Yin, W. J. Padilla and W. Bai (2026). Solution-processed electrochromics for synergistic solar and radiative heat management. Nature Sustainability.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-026-01774-2

Instrument used: UVVIS