Technology at a Glance is a quarterly newsletter from the National Institute of Standards and Technology reporting on research results, funding programs, and manufacturing extension and technology services. If you have comments or general questions about this newsletter or if you would like to receive the four-page, color newsletter in hard copy, please email your mailing address to Gail Porter, editor, or call (301) 975-3392. About Technology at a Glance.

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Nobel Prize Team Earns New Honor

Continuing a whirlwind of events, celebrations, and public lectures, Nobel laureates Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman were honored by a joint resolution in the Colorado House and Senate, as well as by a proclamation by Governor Bill Owens naming March 6 as “Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell Day” in the state of Colorado.

Cornell (right) and Wieman (left) received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for their 1995 creation of the world’s first Bose-Einstein condensate, a new form of matter. Cornell is a NIST senior scientist and an adjoint professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Wieman is a distinguished professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Both are fellows of JILA, a joint institute of NIST and CU-Boulder. The prize was also awarded to Wolfgang Ketterle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The three winners received their prizes from the King of Sweden in December along with a shared check for $943,000.

Predicted in 1924 by Albert Einstein, who built on the work of Satyendra Nath Bose, the condensation occurs when individual atoms meld into a “superatom” behaving as a single entity at just a few hundred billionths of a degree above absolute zero. The 71-year quest to confirm Bose and Einstein’s theory was likened by many physicists to the search for the mythical Holy Grail. More details: www.nist.gov/nobel2001.

Cold Wave Hits Membrane Study

Cell membrane researchers are eagerly bracing for a long-awaited cold wave. A new partnership involving NIST, the University of California-Irvine (UCI), and other organizations will use beams of super-chilled neutrons to probe the elusive structure and interactions of cell membranes and their components, gathering information key to improving disease diagnosis and treatment.

Led by UCI biophysicist Stephen White, the Cold Neutrons for Biology and Technology team received $5 million from the National Center for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health to build the nation’s first neutron-beam research station fully dedicated to biological membrane experiments. To be located at the NIST Center for Neutron Research and completed in 2003, the station will use high-quality beams of “cold” neutrons to explore the disordered, continually changing landscape of cell membranes.

Neutrons are non-destructive, highly penetrating probes. Because they behave like tiny waves of energy, neutrons also make excellent rulers.

Depending on temperature, the length of the neutron ruler can be tuned over a range spanning roughly the size of a single atom to the size of a molecule with hundreds or thousands of atoms.

The research team’s instrument will have dual capabilities: diffractometry and reflectometry. It will detect neutrons that are reflected or otherwise scattered after striking membrane samples. Reflected or diffracted neutrons will provide information on the location, orientation, size, and composition of membrane components. (See graphic above of the molecular structure of a protein found on e coli membranes.) In addition, the team is upgrading an existing instrument useful for studying large molecules—a small-angle neutron scattering spectrometer—that will be shared with researchers in other fields.

The partnership also includes the University of Pennsylvania, Rice University, Carnegie Mellon University, the Duke University Medical Center, and the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Contact: Susan Krueger, (301) 975-6734 or Stephen White, (949) 824-7122, SHWhite@uci.edu.

Bement Testifies On WTC Proposal

In testimony before the Science Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives on May 1, NIST Director Arden L. Bement, Jr., outlined a proposed NIST investigation to study the Sept. 11 collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. The study would investigate building construction, the materials used, and the technical conditions that combined to cause these disasters following the initial impact of the aircraft.

NIST also is proposing a multiyear R&D program to provide the technical basis to support improved building and fire codes, standards, and practices. In addition, it recommends an industry-led dissemination and technical assistance program to provide practical guidance and tools to better prepare facility owners, contractors, designers, and emergency personnel to respond to future disasters. A full description of the proposed plan is available on the Web at wtc.nist.gov.

President Bush appointed Bement as the 12th NIST director several months ago. Bement previously has served on the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (NIST’s primary private-sector advisor) as well as on advisory committees for the Advanced Technology Program and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

Prior to joining NIST, Bement was the David A. Ross Distinguished Professor of Nuclear Engineering and head of the School of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University. He joined the Purdue faculty in 1992 after a 39-year career in industry, government, and academia. These positions included: vice president of science and technology for TRW Inc.; deputy under secretary of defense for research and engineering; director, Office of Materials Science, DARPA; and appointments with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Battelle Northwest Laboratories, and General Electric Co.

He has served on numerous federal advisory boards. Bement holds a doctorate degree in metallurgical engineering and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

Contact: Public and Business Affairs, (301) 975-2762.

ATP Announces New Competition

NIST’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP) has announced a new competition for cost-sharing awards to support high-risk R&D projects that accelerate the development of path-breaking new technologies important to the U.S. economy.

NIST will accept proposals for the 2002 competition until 3 p.m. EDT on Sept. 30, 2002. Only those proposals postmarked by 3 p.m. EDT on June 10, 2002, will be considered for funding in the current fiscal year. All other proposals received before the Sept. 30 deadline will be evaluated and considered for future funding. Details of the deadline rules are in an April 18, 2002, Federal Register notice. All ATP applicants may now choose to submit proposals electronically through digitally signed documents.

The ATP has a FY 2002 appropriation of $60.7 million for new awards. Because NIST is now funding ATP applications on a rolling basis, some portion of this may be used for proposals submitted for FY 2001 or FY 2003 competitions.

Further information: www.atp.nist.gov/www/press/2002comp.htm or call (800) ATP-FUND.

You’ve heard of homogenized milk, but how about homogenized laser beams? In an effort to provide accurate power calibrations for ultraviolet lasers used in advanced semiconductor manufacturing and eye surgery, NIST researchers have developed a system for homogenizing the beam intensity of excimer lasers. NIST is the only laboratory in the world providing such calibrations.

Each laser emits light of only one specific wavelength, but the intensity of light across a cross section of the beam may vary substantially. NIST scientists use a tiny array of overlapping lenses—a fly’s eye approach—to mix various parts of the beam together. The intensity of the more uniform beam then can be measured with half the uncertainty of previous techniques.

In the graphics of laser power levels, color indicates the intensity of light in different areas of the beam, with red representing the most intense areas and violet representing the least intense. Using the NIST apparatus, the beam (graphic above) was converted from power levels varying by plus or minus 20 percent to a uniformity of plus or minus 2.7 percent (graphic below).

Uniform power and pulse energy are critical parameters in semiconductor lithography, a technique that uses light and elaborate “stencils” to “print” microscopic circuits. The next generation of advanced semiconductor lithography machines will be able to make circuits less than 70 nm (billionths of a meter) wide. Beam uniformity also is important for excimer lasers used in laser eye surgery to prevent complications such as double vision or glare problems at night.

To assist manufacturers, NIST provides power calibrations for excimer lasers operating at 248 nm and 193 nm and has plans to add calibrations of 157 nm lasers within a year.

Each calibration takes about one week to complete and NIST performs between 60 and 80 of these calibrations per year. Because NIST is the only lab doing this work, other countries such as Japan, Israel, Germany, and Canada send their detectors to NIST for calibrations. The excimer laser used in NIST’s dose measurements is on loan from SEMATECH, the semiconductor industry consortium based in Austin, Texas.

Contact: Marla Dowell, (303) 497-7455.

Corn-to-Plastics Plant Opens

Standing in the middle of a former Nebraska cornfield, the world’s first major chemical plant dedicated to turning corn into fabrics and food packaging materials is now fully operational. The new Blair, Neb., facility of Cargill Dow LLC exploits a new technology for producing commercially useful polymers from corn-derived dextrose that was developed with support from NIST’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP).

The new Cargill Dow plant has the capacity to produce up to 140,000 metric tons annually of polylactide polymer (PLA), a polymer resin derived from natural plant sugars. PLA is the first polymer entirely derived from a renewable resource to compete head-to-head in the market with polymers made from oil. Recently recognized by the Federal Trade Commission as a generic class of fiber, PLA can be used for clothing, carpets, bedding, packaging, and other products. PLA fits existing disposal systems and also is fully compostable at the end of its product life.

The Cargill Dow PLA technology was developed in part under a 1994 ATP award. The ATP co-funded research led to processing methods that helped PLAs gain important new properties without losing the environmentally friendly traits that made them attractive in the first place. In 2001, the PLA development received environmental innovation awards from the magazines Discover, Popular Mechanics, and Industry Week.

Contact: Michael O’Brien, (952) 984-3306.

Imaging Tool has X-ray ‘Eyes’

Superman’s got nothing on NIST. Using a new apparatus and software, NIST researchers recently developed a type of materials X-ray “vision” that can “see” minute voids, tiny cracks, and other previously indiscernible microstructural details in a wide range of materials, including metals, ceramics, and biological specimens. The NIST system uses ultra-small-angle X-ray scattering to capture 3-D images on film. And just like a camera needs a flash, the NIST system uses the ultimate flash—the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at the Argonne National Laboratory. Extremely uniform high-energy X-rays from the APS are sent through a sample, yielding plots of data points that correspond to angles and intensities of scattered X-rays. The NIST system collects X-ray scattering data from different perspectives and then assembles them into 3-D images. The images are maps of the small fraction of X-rays scattered by electrons in the material rather than being absorbed or transmitted.

Contact: Lyle Levine, (301) 975-6032.

Protecting Soldiers with Gas Mask Tests

A properly functioning gas mask can be a soldier’s best friend. To help ensure that gas masks work properly, the U.S. Army utilizes portable gas mask testers that can be employed in the field. The instruments detect problems like poor fit that may make the mask leak around the edges, small holes in the mask, or a malfunctioning filter. The Army uses a commercial system that compares the concentration of airborne particulate matter inside the soldier’s mask while it is being worn with the ambient concentration of particulates outside the mask. Ordinary small particulates in the air serve as a stand-in for chemical or biological agents like mustard gas or anthrax since their flow behavior is very similar. The Army has asked NIST to verify that the test system is counting airborne particles properly. NIST uses a uniform particulate source and is developing two independent methods to check the accuracy of the equipment.

Contact: Robert Fletcher, (301) 975-3912.

The Y’s Have it—The Right Stuff for DNA Tests

Researchers recently used DNA testing to show that a male slave was fathered by someone from Thomas Jefferson’s family. Such tests indicate both the presence of male DNA in a blood or tissue sample—only males have Y chromosomes—and the family it came from, because the markers (particular chemical sequences) identified in the test are inherited. NIST has developed a new test that identifies 20 markers on the Y chromosome instead of the six used in older tests. NIST researchers are using the new test to create a Y chromosome Standard Reference Material to help private and government DNA labs simplify paternity testing and improve analysis of forensic samples. The markers—short chemical sequences repeated in pairs—vary enough in a population’s DNA to distinguish individuals and produce good analytical results. None of the markers are believed to occur on X chromosomes, carried by both males and females.

Contact: John Butler, (301) 975-4049.

Helping Manufacturers Get a Grip

With co-funding from NIST’s Advanced Technology Program, Lamb Technicon (a UNOVA company) has worked with four universities to develop an innovative “flexible fixturing” system for manufacturing. Precision machining requires custom-built clamps or “fixtures” that hold a part rigidly in a specific place in the machine tool with micrometer accuracy. An automobile engine alone might require 100 different fixtures, at a cost of up to $5 million. A new fixture must be designed and built for every new or modified part. Lamb Technicon’s system automatically adapts itself to any part within a family, a group of like parts with similar size. The system recognizes different parts automatically and positions each in the proper orientation for the machining process. Lamb Technicon estimates that the system can save automakers $30 to $50 per car, as well as simplify set-up, speed up model change-overs, and economize the production of cars with low-volume demand. The system earned a “Technology of the Year” award from Industry Week.

Contact: Philip Szuba, (586) 497-6131.

Disaster Response— A new agreement between NIST and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) designates the Institute as a research and technical resource for FEMA. The two agencies will work jointly to reduce loss of life and property by protecting buildings and infrastructure from all types of hazards, and aiding technology development and evaluation of equipment used by first responders to emergencies. The agreement also ensures that FEMA can quickly call on NIST for assistance with scientific and technological services in disaster investigations, recovery planning, and support technologies. More information is available at www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/nistfema.htm.

Enhancing Diversity—Helping create an ethnically diverse technical workforce is a goal of a new agreement between NIST and the Science and Engineering Alliance. SEA is an alliance of four state-supported historically black colleges and universities and the Depart-ment of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The partnership aims to foster collaborative research among the staff of the participating organizations and to provide a vehicle for the exchange of
students, faculty, and staff members between SEA institutions and NIST. The agreement will enhance the scientific, technical, and creative resources of the SEA institutions, and advance knowledge in the chemical and physical science and engineering, while producing top-quality graduate and undergraduate students. Additional information: www.llnl.gov/sea.

Lean Manufacturing—After Sept. 11, 2001, requests for products made by Garrett Metal Detectors skyrocketed. The Garland, Texas small manufacturer is keeping pace with demand with the help of the Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center, an affiliate of NIST’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP). The center’s specialists used the “lean manufacturing” approach to identify possible improvements and provide training to Garrett’s staff. As a result, the company reduced cycle time by 75 percent and increased production by 300 to 400 percent with the same number of people and one third less floor space. Contact: Susan Tully, (512) 206-9081or (800) MEP-4MFG.

About Technology at a Glance:

NIST is an agency of the US Department of Commerce's Technology Administration. NIST develops and promotes measurement, standards, and technology to enhance productivity, facilitate trade, and improve the quality of life. Technology at a Glance is produced by Public and Business Affairs, NIST, 100 Bureau Dr., Stop 3460, Gaithersburg, Md. 20899-3460. Any mention of commercial products is for information only; it does not imply recommendation or endorsement by NIST. Technology at a Glance Editor: Gail Porter, (301) 975-3392, email: gail.porter@nist.gov. For patent information, call (301) 975-3084.

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