As with other university-based shared facilities, hourly user fees are charged as a means of recovering a portion of the costs associated with operating such a facility. These fees are reviewed and approved by the SMIF Faculty Advisory Committee, the Pratt School of Engineering Dean's Office, and the Duke University Central Accounting office.

Equipment Use Fees

Equipment Use Fees are used to recover operating costs associated with the equipment and the laboratory (equipment and lab supplies, maintenance costs, labor to keep the tools running, etc.)

Industry users working on government contracts are billed at the "External University and Non-Profit" rate.

*Cleanroom users are billed for the time they are in the cleanroom as noted by logging in (starting a tool group reservation) upon entering the cleanroom and logging out (stopping a tool group reservation) upon exiting the cleanroom.  Reservations for equipment inside the cleanroom are not billed, except for the EBL.

**All equipment in the Sample Prep Lab is billed at the same rate, excpet for the Ion Mill (IMIILL1).  Microscope usage in the sample prep lab is not billed.

The monthly cap is the maximum amount that is charged for that tool group or instrument per month. This cap is applied per user within a given fund code, and not per faculty or PI. There is no monthly cap on TEM3 (Krios Cryo-TEM) usage or on users fees incurred by industry users.

SMIF Labor Fees

$67.00/hour for University and Non-Profit Users

$100.00/hour for Industry Users

This fee is charged in addition to the equipment use rate when staff labor is required or desired. Examples include equipment training of new users, and processing or measurement support by a SMIF staff member. SMIF labor fees are not capped on a monthly basis for any user.

Billing Methodology

Users are required to reserve time on equipment using the CoreResearch@Duke system.  SMIF bills you based on your actual usage of the instrument or lab. However, the system defaults to your reserved time for billing if you do not start/stop your reservation manually. This also means that you will be billed for your reservation if you do not show up, unless you cancel the reservation ahead of time.

The billing cycle runs from the 1st day of the month to the last day of the month. Invoices for user charges are emailed monthly to the PI and Grant Manager for Duke users, and to the customer contacts provided to SMIF for external users.