Institute

Nanofabrication is done in the clean room (“Mikrostrukturlabor”) at the University of Stuttgart. The cleanroom is equipped with all instrumentation necessary for nanofabrication and characterization. Fabrication techniques include electron beam evaporation (Pfeiffer Classic 500L), electron beam lithography (shared equipment), optical lithography (shared equipment) and standard shared equipment for spin coating, heating, plasma ashing among others. More information can be found here.

The 2. Physics Institute has all the necessary equipment for the synthesis of DNA-origami, unilamellar liposomes (SUV, LUV, GUV) and the assembly of DNA nanostructures including various centrifuges, thermocyclers, gel electrophoresis, gel-imaging system, microfluidic systems, sonicators, plasma-asher among others. For the synthesis and assembly, one biology lab and one wet-chemistry lab are available.

We use standard microscopes, home-build laser setups, dynamic light scattering, UV-VIS spectrometry, dark-field spectroscopy (NT&C), fluorescence spectrometry (Jasco), circular dichroism spectrometry (Jasco J-1500), fluorescence life time imaging and Förster resonance energy transfer (Picoquant, MicroTime 200), total internal reflection spectroscopy (shared equipment, SRCSB) and confocal microscopy (shared equipment, SRCSB). More information on the shared equipment installed at the microsopy platform of the SRCSB can be found here.

Techniques to investigate the structural properties of our nanostructures include scanning electron microscopy (shared equipment in the Mikrostrukturlabor) and transmission electron microscopy (shared equipment at the Electron Microscopy Center of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research).