Facilities and Services

The Physical Sciences Division offices are located in the William Eckhardt Research Building. Our departments, institutes, and centers are located throughout the University of Chicago’s Hyde Park campus.

PSD Services

Core Facilities

The PSD offers several core facilities and services to enable scientific research for scientists and physicians campus-wide.

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility

The Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility serves students, faculty, and staff across the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, providing training and enabling researchers to obtain their own NMR and EPR spectra.

Facility Manager: Josh Kurutz

X-Ray Crystallography

The X-ray research facilities support University of Chicago research by providing access to the state-of-the-art X-ray diffraction, scattering, and spectroscopy techniques. 

Facility Manager: Dr. Alex Filatov | Office: SCL402 | Phone: 773.834.5861

Mass Spectroscopy

The Department of Chemistry mass spectroscopy facilities provide chromatography, mass spectrometry, and IR instrumentation. Description of facilities.

Facility Director:  Dr. C. Jin Qin | Office: SCL 340C | 773.834.8905 | changqin@uchicago.edu

FIB-SEM

The FIB-SEM facility in the Department of the Geophysical Sciences features a TESCAN LYRA3 field-emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) with a focused ion beam (FIB).

Contact FIBSEM-manager@uchicago.edu for more details or to schedule a session.

EFI Electronics Shop

The role of the 'eshop' is to work with students and faculty members on cutting edge electronic design. Graduate and undergraduate students work with engineers to design, build, test and troubleshoot hardware and firmware on custom electronics.

Contact: mkheintz@uchicago.edu

Engineering and Technical Support Group (ETSG)

The Engineering and Technical Support group can help users plan, design, build, and test mechanical apparatus for groundbreaking research projects. 

Contact

Mechanical Design and Fabrication Lab

The Mechanical Design and Fabrication Laboratory, located in room 307 of the Michelson Center for Physics (MCP), hosts CAD workstations, 3D printers, and a work area stocked with tools to support student research.

Cleanroom and Nanofabrication Facility

The Searle Cleanroom and Nanofabrication Facility is open to all UChicago researchers. The cleanroom houses a variety of deposition, lithography and device characterization tools in Class 100/1000 space. In adjacent space are facilities for handling chemical and biological samples, and a soft lithography laboratory.

Facility Manager: Dr. Wook Jun Nam | searle-cleanroom@uchicago.edu | 773.795.2297

Cylinder Gas Operations

Cylinder Gas Operations handles the purchasing, distribution, and billing for all cylinder gases sold on campus, but not Argonne. They can assist with questions and assistance regarding gas selection, purity, mixtures, hardware, availability and lead times, and connections/hookups. Orders are placed and delivered daily, with most lead times being 1 – 3 days for non-specialty items.

For billing inquiries: 

Prentice Bradford, Supervisor | prenticebradford@uchicago.edu | 773.702.7353

For orders: orders@cylinder-gas.uchicago.edu

Materials Research Center Shared Facilities

MRSEC maintains a robust set of Shared Research Facilities for making, characterizing, measuring, and imaging many types of materials and samples.

Resources include:

  • FEG Scanning electron microscopes with electron-beam writing capabilities and sub-nm imaging resolution
  • Scanning probe microscopes including atomic force microscopes and scanning tunneling microscopes
  • A suite of spectroscopy instruments for Raman, Fluorescence, UV/VIS/NIR absorption, particle sizing, thin film, and thermal characterization
  • KRÜSS Surface Science Lab for contact angle, interfacial tension, and surface energy
  • Materials preparation lab with surface coating, thermal processing, optical lithography, and vapor deposition facilities
  • Laser cutter, 3D printers, and personal CNC machines for rapid fabrication
  • State-of-the-art image processing and high-speed cameras
  • Low temperature magnetic and electrical characterization

Explore the available facilities.