
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
Monday – Friday
Staffed: 9am – 5pm
OneCard Access: 24/7
SM Core Highlights
Customer Research Highlights | SMCL News | Upcoming Events | And many more…
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(#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 and accurate analytical techniques for the determination of polymer polydispersity, homopolymers impurities, block sequences and…
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(#MS1) MALDI-TOF MS: A Superior Technique to GPC for Molecular Weight Determination of Synthetic Polymers
INTRODUCTION Gel Permeation Chromatography (GPC) has been a standard for molecular weight determination of synthetic polymers for decades, but the technique has some notable limitations and challenges. Matrix-assisted time of flight laser desorption mass spectrometry (MALDI-ToF MS) has emerged as a very powerful technique that not only addresses most of the limitations of GPC, but…
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MALDI-TOF MS Sample Analysis Service Available Now at the SM Core Lab
We are proud to announce the addition of a new SM Core Lab service – Polymer molecular weight determinations by Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-ToF/ToF). The highly sensitive Bruker UltrafleXtreme MALDI-ToF mass analyzer, located in the UNC Mass Spectrometry Core Lab (Caudill 040), will be an excellent addition to…
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

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!