Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Instrument used: TEM

Ravel, V. M., S. R. Evans, S. K. Holmes, J. L. Doherty, M. S. Rahman, T. Roy and A. D. Franklin (2026). Impact of Contact Gating on Scaling of Monolayer 2D Transistors Using a Symmetric Dual-Gate Structure. ACS Nano 20(8): 7127–7136.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.5c19797

Press release: https://pratt.duke.edu/news/transistor-contact-gating-study/

Instruments used: Cleanroom, EBL, SEM, Raman

Singh, R. R., A. Chinni, E. Cannistraci, R. Salinas, S. Yadav, K. Gozzi and M. A. Schumacher (2026). Transcription activation mechanism of a noncanonical DNA damage response pathway by the WYL-activator, DriD. Science Advances 12(12): eaec6337.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aec6337

Instrument used: CryoTEM

Outreach

Characterization

Cleanroom

Staff

Cryo-TEM

Publications

SMIF in the News

Congratulations to Xingjian Hu and Ziqing Lin, Winners of the Inaugural SMIF Outstanding Paper Contest!