The Innovative Materials Laboratory (IMLab), established in 2025 under the collaboration agreement of December 22, 2022 with University of Florence and the European Laboratory of NonLinear Spectroscopy, is a new INRiM facility located in Sesto Fiorentino dedicated to the micro- and nanofabrication of innovative materials for scientific and metrological applications.
IMLab consists of a facility comprising a chemical laboratory for sample preparation (equipped with a chemical fume hood, ultrasonic bath, and precision balances) and a laboratory dedicated to fabrication and characterization. The latter houses a two-photon lithography system, deposition systems (sputtering and spin coating), and two microscopes (a polarized optical microscope and a scanning electron microscope).
The mission of IMLab is the study of innovative soft materials and their micro- and nano-structured composites for applications in metrology, photonics, microrobotics, cryptography, magnetism, sensing, and biomedical engineering.
The facility is open to researchers from national and European universities through scientific collaborations and/or joint participation in research projects, as well as to companies via industrial contracts.
Thanks to the combination of advanced lithographic techniques and innovative materials, it is possible to develop and characterize ordered and disordered micro- and nano-structured materials. These range in dimensionality from 2D to 4D, utilizing both commercial and customized polymers and their composites.