The new Soft Matter Facility (SoMF) is the user facility focused on characterization of multifunctional soft materials. The establishment of SoMF is funded through the Research Development Fund and represents multiple colleges and centers across the university actively involved in soft materials-related research, including the Colleges of Engineering, Science, and Agriculture & Life Sciences at Texas A&M university. The facility will be supervised by the Director, Svetlana Sukhishvili (CoE/TEES), with oversight by the Executive Committee composed of Yossef Elabd (CoE/TEES), Allison Rice-Ficht (TAMU/CoM), Duncan Maitland (CoE/TEES), and Karen Wooley (CoS).
With the establishment of SoMF, existing and new equipment for the chemical and physical characterization of soft matter will be made available to the entire TAMU community and interested external users (including other research organizations, industry, and hospitals). SoMF occupies 3,100 square feet of lab space in the Lynntech building at 1313 Research Parkway, College Station, TX 77845.
The facility will initially include four instrumentation suites based on the soft-matter-centered research areas which will be unified by the general theme of characterization of hierarchically structured multi-component, multifunctional soft materials: Molecular Characterization, Processing & Mechanics, Thin Films & Interfacial Analysis, and Nanostructure Characterization.