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Material Measurement Laboratory

Projects/Programs

Displaying 151 - 175 of 580
An engineered bacterial sensor is placed in a contaminated pond containing PFAS. RNA circuits in the bacterial chassis measure PFAS-specific RNA signatures. The bacterial sensor turns pink in response to the presence of PFAS.

Engineering Living Measurement Systems to Sense PFAS

Ongoing
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS, are thermodynamically stable organic fluorinated chemicals that are resistant to traditional degradation pathways leading to concern for bioaccumulation. These compounds originate from several industrial manufacturing processes and are found in soil systems...
GPCR

Engineering of G Protein-Coupled Receptors

Ongoing
A trait of all life is the ability to sense and respond to changing environments, and the largest family of eukaryotic proteins that sense and respond to extracellular signals are called G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs). In humans, over 800 GPCRs detect a wide range of biological and chemical...

Environmental Leaching of Nanoparticles from Consumer Products

Ongoing
New nanotechnology-based consumer products are currently entering the market at a rate of 3 or 4 per week, and it is estimated that $2.6 trillion in manufactured goods will contain nanotechnology by 2014. Unfortunately, the overall safety of short- and long-term exposure to nanoparticles and the...
Photo with a person making notes on the notepad and superimposed graphics of check boxes and charts

Environmental Metrology Measurement Assistant (EMMA)

Ongoing
Quantification of environmental metrology data can be complex at the level on which NIST operates. Projects often include dozens of samples from multiple matrices and can target well over 300 analytes of vastly different chemical properties, each of which must be individually assessed. Quality...

ERCC 2.0: Developing a New Suite of RNA Controls

Completed
Requested RNA Control products include: Transcript isoforms; New and improved messenger RNA mimics and mixture formulations; microRNA and other small RNA molecules; and Cancer fusion transcripts. ERCC technical working groups are developing design specifications, RNA control products, and analysis...
Harnessing EUV capabilities for non-destructive metrology

EUV Scatterometry

Ongoing
To measure and inspect the smallest printed features on an IC chip, researchers and manufacturers use a combination of electron scanning modalities (i.e., transmission electron and scanning electron microscopies) and an optical method, scatterometry. Industrially, the most common modality for...
microfluidic chip

Evaluating Measurement Quality of Microfluidic Cell-based Assays

Completed
Impact and Customers Our work establishes metrics for measurement quality and reproducibility for cell-based assays within microfluidic devices. Many novel microfluidic devices are being created that permit new measurements or enable new biological functions to be tested; however, characterizations...
A time series of a MoS2 flake exposed to increasing time under electrical stress shows the growth of defects denoted with red and yellow areas over time. S= source and D = drain electrode.

Evaluation of 2D and WBG Material Quality Toward Device Reliability

Ongoing
Two-dimensional (2D) and wide band gap (WBG) materials are some of the latest materials classes having the potential to be transformative because of their high carrier mobilities, tunable bandgap, and atomic-scale film thicknesses. Unexpected degradation and failure in device performance is often...
Ammunition metal box with explosives sticker.

Explosives Decomposition Chemistry

Completed
Intended Impact Computational modeling and simulation will help in the invention of new explosives, the design of compounded mixtures of existing materials, and the engineering of delivered systems such as military ordnance. Objective Detailed chemistry is a necessary part of computational...
ERCC

External RNA Controls Consortium

Completed
While early gene expression measurements with DNA microarrays were groundbreaking in their ability to reveal biological activity, the results were irreconcilable and irreproducible. Industry leaders approached the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2003 for help with addressing...
extreme atom probe tomography illustration

Extreme Atom Probe Tomography

Ongoing
Sub-nanometer-resolved 3-D chemical mapping of any atom in any solid continues to be an imperative goal of materials research. If reduced to practice, it would have profound scientific, engineering, and economic impacts on U.S. industries collectively worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Such...

Facilitating the Development of Modular Data Models in Materials Science

Ongoing
Development of Data Models This project is convening experts with the goal of developing foundational data types and domain-specific data models to address common modeling, synthesis and measurement techniques. The existence of such data models will facilitate the adoption of the Materials Data...

Fatigue in Silicon

Ongoing
It has long been thought that bulk silicon is immune to fatigue. We present contrary evidence by demonstrating severe fatigue in macroscale specimens. Cracks are produced during cyclic loading of monocrystalline silicon plates with a 3 mm radius sphere indenter mounted onto a universal testing...
Photograph of SRM 2378 Fatty Acids in Human Serum showing three vials labeled Serum 1, Serum 2, and Serum 3.

Fatty Acids in Human Serum and Plasma Quality Assurance Program (FAQAP)

Completed
Interlaboratory comparison studies of the FAQAP focused on the measurement of 24 fatty acids in selected serum and plasma matrices. Frozen or freeze-dried serum or plasma samples were sent to laboratories for analysis together with control materials. Results were returned to NIST for data evaluation...

Fingerprint Chemistry

Paused
Verification Test Materials (VTMs) for Fingerprint Developing Reagents The forensic community has no quantifiable QA/QC method for determining the efficacy of fingerprint developing reagents prior to use in casework. Reagents can be exposed to environmental conditions in the field that can expedite...

FiPy

Ongoing
The solution of coupled sets of PDEs is ubiquitous to the numerical simulation of science problems. Numerous PDE solvers exist, using a variety of languages and numerical approaches. Many are proprietary, expensive and difficult to customize. As a result, scientists spend considerable resources...

Fire Debris and Explosives

Ongoing
Fire Debris Fire debris analysis involves the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data of debris collected from fire scenes. Samples are typically analyzed by gas chromatography mass spectrometry which results in a complicated chromatogram that must be interpreted. Projects in this area are...
Graphic of a flexible organic semiconductor-based device.

Flexible and Printed Electronics

Completed
Approach Developing commercial products based on organic electronics requires materials that deliver predictable and reproducible performance. One advantage of these materials is their compatibility with versatile solution processing methods. However, this advantage can lead to unpredictable...
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