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 Science and Engineering Division

Functional Nanostructured Materials Group

Projects/Programs

Displaying 1 - 15 of 15
Advancing Power Electronics with Defect Metrology, Key challenges of near market devices of

Advancing Power Electronics with Defect Metrology

Ongoing
Power electronics play a central role in all aspects of electrical energy storage, distribution, conversion, and consumption. Currently, power electronics heavily rely on Si-based insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBT), which have large footprints, are inefficient, and require extensive cooling

Electrochemistry

Ongoing
Operando Measurements Measurements of the structure and dynamics of metal-electrolyte interfaces are essential for understanding mechanisms of electrocatalysis and electrodeposition that are key to optimization of materials processing and utilization in wet chemical environments. Our measurement

Future Directions for Magnetic Sensors

Completed
Bringing new or improved magnetic sensors to market requires modeling for rapid assessment of the effect of new designs or improved materials properties. To this end, we are investigating the fundamental properties of a new class of magnetic sensors that is rapidly displacing ones based on older
Today, device performance needs to be evaluated to determine success of materials development. This project will advance metrology for magnetic materials and develop models to predict device performance.

High Speed Metrology for Magnetoelectronic Devices and Models

Ongoing
The U.S. Semiconductor industry is integrating ferromagnet-based microelectronic devices such as magnetic RAM (MRAM) into existing silicon-based technologies. MRAM has much shorter write times and higher write endurance than the embedded Flash currently used. These properties makes MRAM highly

Magnetic Imaging

Completed
Advanced magnetic devices and storage media will rely on ultra thin ferromagnetic films; since such films are quasi two-dimensional magnets, they can have strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA). Optimization of future materials, including improved yields, requires an ability to measure film

Magnetic Materials Metrology

Ongoing
Our aim is to develop the metrology for control and manipulation of magnetic anisotropy in magnetic materials. This includes development of the measurement science for quantification of the magnetic properties (e.g., magnetic anisotropy, magnetic exchange) and the structure-property-processing

Magnetic Nanostructures for post-CMOS Electronics

Completed
We focus primarily on arrays of magnetic nanostructures in order to reveal how defects alter the fundamental physics of magnetization reversal processes in the nanometer regime. We have an integrated approach that consists of four inter-related elements. The first element, film edge metrology

Measurements for Hydrogen Storage Materials

Completed
The evaluation of candidate storage materials is complicated by a lack of readily available methods for the direct measurement of hydrogen content. MML is working together with researchers from NCNR, and PML to provide measurement tools to fill this gap. Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis (PGAA) is a

Measuring Intermolecular Interactions with Electro-Acoustic Spectroscopy

Ongoing
We have a number of opportunities to collaborate with us. See below for details. What does this project aim to do for the chemical industry? Many industrial processes depend on the intermolecular environment- the solvents and ions that surround a molecule. These interactions impact separations
Photo of the magnetic moment and susceptibility SRMs - platinum cylinder, YIG sphere, Ni sphere, and Ni disk.

Metrology of Magnetic Materials

Ongoing
Currently, the bulk of this project is focused on three main pieces: Thermal MagIC: An SI-Traceable Method for 3D Thermal Magnetic Imaging and Control Magnetic Refrigeration Magnetic Standard Reference Materials (SRMs) Thermal MagIC (MAGnetic Imaging and Control) is focused on developing new

Microscopy Methods

Completed
Due to projection effects, analytical transmission electron microscopy (AEM) of thinned or sectioned samples has traditionally been limited to essentially two-dimensional imaging and analysis. Current nanometer scale devices are too small and complex for current sectioning capabilities and two
Integrated multi-physics simulation and validation

Multiscale Modeling and Validation of Semiconductor Materials and Devices

Ongoing
The limitations of scaling traditional CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductors) designs have necessitated that the semiconductor industry consider new materials and design concepts. For wide bandgap semiconductor devices, optimization of materials and fabrication processes is needed to

Semiconductor Nanowire Metrology: Electronics, Photonics, and Sensors

Completed
One of the key issues hampering progress in semiconductor nanotechnology is the absence of standardized nanostructures. We address this need through the controlled fabrication and assembly of semiconductor nanowire test structures with well-defined properties. To achieve this, we have manufactured