U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Material Measurement Laboratory

Materials Measurement Science Division

Projects/Programs

Displaying 26 - 50 of 99
Blue rectangle with green line through it. Electron Solid Interaction Illustration.

Electron-Solid Interactions

Ongoing
A measuring instrument produces a signal that depends upon the value of the measurand. The value and its uncertainty are inferred from the signal by using a model of their relationship. Erroneous models lead to erroneous inference. The accuracy of SEM (scanning electron microscopy) is limited by

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

Fingerprint Chemistry

Ongoing
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

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

Forensic Chemistry

Ongoing
Drug Analysis - Opioids and Emerging Threats This program primarily seeks to support the needs of the > 400 publicly funded state, local, and tribal forensic laboratories in the United States. The increased complexity of the analysis needed to keep pace with these emerging threats has resulted in
Photo of broken laminated windshield glass

Glass Evidence Analysis

Ongoing
Quantitative XRF Glass Database Recent research efforts in the forensic trace field have focused on the development of databases to assign a significance to forensic evidence (i.e., to report the strength of an association or exclusion). In the forensic analysis of glass using µ-XRF, samples are

Hierarchical Materials

Ongoing
The STG develops the methods and metrology that will lead to the understanding of the structure-property relationships of hierarchical composites in real medical PPE or protective applications, which heretofore has been lacking. This work establishes in situ monitoring of advanced manufacturing
DSC01010_combiPLD_scale2

High Throughput Thin-film Materials Science

Ongoing
There are many materials science problems that don’t have good modeling frameworks and exist in large design spaces. In these domains the best approach is to rapidly acquire data. To achieve this we can deposit metallic alloys as thin films with a range of composition (or less commonly processing

Illicit Narcotics Detection

Ongoing
“Method for evaluating ion mobility spectrometers for trace detection of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances”, Jennifer R Verkouteren, Jeffrey Lawrence, R Michael Verkouteren and Edward Sisco, Analytical Methods, 11(47), 6043-6052 (2019). “Discriminative potential of ion mobility spectrometry

Inkjet Printing and Precision Deposition

Ongoing
Inkjet Droplet Metrology: Drop-on-Demand (DOD) inkjet printing allows precise deposition of picoliter (pL)-size droplets of solutions containing organic or inorganic materials. These drops can be used to create unique patterns, structures, and coatings and build 3-D microstructures making it a
pedslashfullres

Inorganic Phase Equilibrium Data

Ongoing
Every deliberate effort to develop a new material or to improve processing begins with chemical composition and the conditions (temperature, pressure) under which pure compounds and their mixtures are stable ( an equilibrium phase diagram ). In the absence of such information, materials scientists

Ion Mobility Spectrometry

Ongoing
IMS employs a drift tube with an applied electric field to separate ionized molecules based on their mobility. The technique is robust and capable of differentiating a wide range of drug and explosive molecules. Recent work has sought to investigate the utility of IMS for screening of illicit
Figure with the word “isotope” and related icons superimposed on a photograph of a man pointing to the figure.

Isotope Metrology

Ongoing
The application of isotope measurements drives advances in an enormous number of fields and stakeholder engagements, including federal and state government agencies, academia, and private industry including the medical industry. The objective of the NIST Isotope Metrology Program is to address the
NIST JARVIS

JARVIS-ALIGNN, JARVIS-ALIGNN-FF

Ongoing
ALIGNN uses a line graph neural networks to include bond distances and angular information graph to incorporate finer details of atomic structure, leading to high accuracy models. While the nodes of an atomistic graph correspond to atoms and its edges correspond to bonds, the nodes of an atomistic
JARVIS-ML overview

JARVIS-ML

Ongoing
JARVIS-ML introduced Classical Force-field Inspired Descriptors (CFID) as a universal framework to represent a material’s chemistry-structure-charge related data. With the help of CFID and JARVIS-DFT data, several high-accuracy classifications and regression ML models were developed, with
A group of students in a laboratory with computers and equipment

A Low-Cost Robot Science Kit for Education

Ongoing
Despite its low cost, Legolas has been demonstrated for machine learning-driven hypothesis design, discovery, and validation. For the last four years, Legolas has been used in hands-on courses at the University of Maryland to teach next-generation workforce skills, including ML, control systems

Magnetic Sector Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry

Ongoing
Magnetic sector SIMS uses high energy “primary” ions to bombard the surface and liberate “secondary” ions much like in ToF-SIMS, but the ion beam is operated continuously to maximize duty cycle. The high ion dose is preferred for depth profiling, where the concentration of elements and isotopes are

Measurement and Prediction of Local Structure

Ongoing
Functional materials enable applications in the computer, data storage, wireless communication, and energy sectors. The properties of many of these systems are critically dependent on deviations of local atomic arrangements from the global average of the crystal. No single measurement technique can
Montage of symbolic standard activities

Measurement and Sampling Standards

Ongoing
A foundational activity that crosscuts our research goals is the development of a variety of standards and test materials to support the effective operation of trace explosive and narcotic detection devices. Trace sampling issues are addressed through fundamental studies on the adhesion and
complex oxides

Measurements of Point-Defect Chemistry in Complex Oxides

Ongoing
Project Goal: To develop magnetic resonance, x-ray absorption, electron diffraction, and electrical conductivity measurements to better characterize dilute concentrations of point defects in oxide materials and effectively correlate electro-mechanical properties to measured defect chemistry. Oxide
Was this page helpful?