Welcome to the SM Core Lab!
The Soft Matter Characterization Core Laboratory is a sub-core of the CHANL Core Facilities dedicated to delivering reliable sample analysis and professional training services on the characterization of soft materials and providing customers open access to state-of-the-art, high performance analytical instrumentation.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Caudill Building, Rm 12 and Rm 125
Monday – Friday
Staffed: 9am – 5pm
UNC OneCard Access: 24/7
Guest Lab Access: 9am – 7pm
Office: Caudill 12
UNC Chemistry Department Core Facilities
The UNC Chemistry Department houses several core laboratories that similarly provide to internal and external customers open access to various instrumentation that can be utilized for soft matter characterization. Each of the core labs are led by experienced scientists who are highly skilled in training and are experts in their field.
UNC’s Nanomedicines Characterization Core Facility (NCore) also offer comparable and complementary capabilities to the SM Core Lab. A complete listing of UNC core laboratories can be found in the UNC School of Medicine website.
CHANL
Make Nano – Measure Nano
- Microscopy – Scanning and transmission electron microscopy, atomic force, nano indentation, optical
- Fabrication – Lithography, thin-film deposition, ion beam milling, deep reactive ion etching
- Spectroscopy – Fourier transform, X-ray diffraction, microspectrophotometry, ellipsometry
MSCL
Mass Spectrometry Core Lab
- Polymer average masses Mn and Mw
- Absolute MW determination of repeating units (monomers)
- Sum mass of the polymer end-groups
- Elucidation of polymerization mechanism
NMR Core
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
- Monomer structure confirmation
- Branching determination
- Co-polymer composition
- Observation of tacticity
XCL
X-ray Crystallography
- Determination of degree of crystallinity in polymers
- Polymer microstructure determination (crystallite size)
- Determination of crystalline orientation
SM Core Highlights
Customer Research Highlights | SMCL News | Upcoming Events | Application Notes
-
We’re Expanding: A new lab addition and acquisition of three spectroscopic instrumentation
The SM Core Lab has acquired four spectroscopic instruments from the UNC SERC group. They are a valuable addition to the core lab, expanding our analytical capabilities to include UV/Vis/NIR (Cary 5000), Raman (Renishaw inVia), and Fluorescence (Edinburgh FLS980) Spectroscopy…
-
SM Core Lab Additions: Optical and Force Tensiometers
The SM Core Lab is happy to announce the addition of the Biolin Scientific Attension Theta Flex Optical Contact Angle and Attension Sigma 701 Force tensiometers. The tensiometers are brought to us through the great generosity of Dr. Sergei Sheiko.…
-
(#MS2) An Optimization Strategy for Successful MALDI-TOF MS Analysis of Synthetic Polymers
Introduction Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) has gained popularity in the past two decades due to the increasing demand for complex polymers in specific technological, environmental, consumer, or biomedical applications that require fast, powerful…
Acknowledgement
This work was performed in part at the Chapel Hill Analytical and Nanofabrication Laboratory, CHANL, a member of the North Carolina Research Triangle Nanotechnology Network, RTNN, which is supported by the National Science Foundation, Grant ECCS-2025064, as part of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure, NNCI.
NSF Acknowledgement Statement:
CHANL receives support from NSF through the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure, NNCI, program. If you publish a paper that includes data acquired or structures fabricated in CHANL, please include the following in the acknowledgement section of your paper. Once your paper is published, please send it to Vivian Lin, so that we can also add it to CHANL’s list of publications. Thank you!