A broad range of facilities for characterization of electronic materials is available within the physics department. These include optical techniques such as low temperature photoluminescence, time-resolved photoluminescence, excitation spectroscopy, transmission and reflectivity, Raman scattering, and spectroscopic ellipsometry. Scanning probe techniques including Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and Near-Field Scanning Optical Microscopy (NSOM) for extremely high spatial resolution characterization are also maintained.  Electrical characterization tools include temperature-dependent Hall measurements, capacitance and current voltage profiling, photoelectric effect, and frequency dependent impedance measurements.

The solid-state physics laboratories are supported by thin-film preparation systems, such as growth chambers in which electron beam, sputtering, and thermal deposition can be performed. Real-time materials characterization and in-situ scanning probe microscopy are being incorporated in growth systems. A state-of-the-art materials processing lab, which includes a class 1000 clean room, has recently been constructed. Facilities for photolithography, wafer cleaning, reactive ion etching, diffusion doping, and oxide growth are housed in the clean room.

The Structure of Materials Laboratory houses facilities for the study of materials on the atomic scale. There are two x-ray diffractometers for crystallography, one powered by a high-intensity rotating anode generator. A small-angle x-ray scattering attachment allows study of structural fluctuations on a scale from 1 to 30 nm. Mossbauer spectrometers can be operated with samples from 4 K to 1000 K, and a special detector allows backscatter measurements for near-surface studies.
The high pressure materials physics laboratory is equipped for various measurements on dense liquids and solids. It contains three diamond anvil and two sapphire ball cells for generating pressures from 0.1 to 100 GPa, a 5-watt argon ion laser, a variety of microscopes, and several spectrometers and liquid- helium cryostats. All of the optical and electrical characterization techniques mentioned above can be performed under pressure.

The surface physics laboratories have ultrahigh vacuum chambers equipped for analysis of surface and interface chemical composition and structure. One system contains both scanning Auger electron and secondary ion mass spectroscopies. A second system has a high-resolution x-ray photoelectron spectrometer equipped with ion sputter cleaning and sample heating, and is connected to a sample preparation chamber and a high-pressure, heated catalytic cell. 

The optics labs are equipped with high-power ion lasers, gas lasers, solid-state lasers, standing-wave lasers, and ring-dye lasers, as well as several conventional sources. A new facility for generation of ultrashort x-ray pulses is being developed. Experiments are performed with high quality optical equipment for manipulating and detecting the light, such as a subtractive-dispersive triple monochromator, multichannel photomultiplier, and a spectroscopic grade charge-coupled device detector.

The experimental nuclear physics group has a General Ionex model-1545 high-current 180-keV particle accelerator. Cross-section measurements are performed with a collection of state-of-the-art ion and radiation detectors.

More than 60 networked workstations running Linux, Unix, and Windows NT provide access to the Internet and to tools such as Mathematica, TeX, data analysis and graphics programs, Web development, and compilers for number crunching.

The Physics Department maintains fully equipped electronics and instrument shops with full-time technicians in each. The electronics support includes design, fabrication, and repair of all digital and analog instrumentation. Students frequently gain valuable experience by becoming involved in electronics support activities. The instrument shop offers a formal course in shop practice that most experimentally oriented graduate students take.

Research is also conducted at national and international facilities such as NIST's Cold Neutron Research Facility, Oakridge National Laboratories, and Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory. Graduate students have the opportunity to travel to these locations and to interact with the international communities of physicists who do experiments at centralized laboratories.