Shared Facilities & Equipment

In addition to the myriad faculty laboratories, the College of Engineering maintains several core user facilities that offer a suite of world-class specialized instrumentation and capabilities for faculty, staff, student, and external partner use.

Please contact me at russ.johnson@wisc.edu and Xiujuan Jane at xiujuan.zhang@wisc.edu if you are interested in becoming our industrial equipment users.

The College of Engineering has facilities and laboratories that are well equipped and available for corporate use.

Nanoscale Fabrication Center (NFC)

Nanscale Imaging and Analysis Center (NAIC)

Soft Materials Characterization Laboratory (SMCL)

University of Wisconsin Nuclear Reactor (UWNR)

The University of Wisconsin – Madison College of Engineering has an extensive collection of state-of-the-art analytical equipment for industry use.  This collection of instruments can be used for compositional, mechanical, and structural analysis as well as sample prep and nanofabrication.

Sometimes you need a little extra hand to meet your goals.  UW-Madison subject matter experts can perform testing and analyze data, consulting with you along the way, to set you up for success.

New WCNT Users (see below for requirements for specific centers)

Welcome to the Wisconsin Centers for Nanotechnology!

Getting started — Users of any/all Centers (NIAC, NFC and SMCL) need to complete the three steps below before any further action can be taken.

  1. Industrial user agreement: any industrial users who wish to access our shared facilities must review, sign our license agreement.
  2. Account setup: Before funding can be set up for you in the Wisconsin Centers for Nanoscale Technology (WCNT), you must first create a user account in Facilities Online Manager (FOM). You can do this by clicking http://wcam-fom.doit.wisc.edu/fom/welcome selecting the “I am a new user” link and following the directions.  This account is valid for all Centers (NIAC, NFC and SMCL).  If you already have a FOM account you don’t need to create a new one to use another center.
  3. Funding:  The principle investigator or their designee are responsible for maintenance of their funding strings.  For instructions, please click here.  For questions, contact Lori Snyder (rm 2713 Engineering Hall, lori.snyder@wisc.edu).  External users need to provide PO information for their account through FOM.
  4. Training:  Once you have created an account you can request specific equipment training through the FOM scheduling software.

What can I expect as a User?

After users have created their account and requested training they will be contacted by the instrument manager to setup a training time.  After trained and meeting any safety requirements users will be allowed to schedule and use the instruments in the WCNT.

All instrument use is tracked by FOM and billed monthly.

Billing 

Billing is submitted electronically on a monthly basis. A “test” bill is sent out after the first of each month, giving the principal investigator a minimum of three days to review the billing charges and make any changes in the funding before the final billing is submitted.

Funding changes  

Any requests to do funding changes after the billing has been submitted will have to be done by the principal investigator’s department staff as a non-salary transfer. The WCNT can only change the current month’s billing and charges forward.  The WCNT will not be able to do retroactive changes, but you can ask your departmental accounting staff to do retroactive changes for you.