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Projects/Programs

Displaying 101 - 125 of 149

Nanophononic Metamaterials for Thermoelectrics

Ongoing
About 68 % of the energy produced in the United States is wasted as heat lost to the environment. About a quarter of this lost heat is present at temperature gradients suitable for recovery with thermoelectric devices, which use the ability of semiconductors to generate electricity directly from...

Nanoscale, Element-Specific X-ray Imaging for Integrated Circuit Metrology

Ongoing
Industry roadmaps identify the characterization of nanoscale subsurface feature shape and composition as a measurement need for the semiconductor industry. However, IC interiors are difficult to probe post-manufacturing due to the presence of many close-packed and nanoscale subsurface features, of...

Nanoscale Property Measurements by Atomic Force Microscopy

Ongoing
Over the past several decades, Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) has advanced from a technique used primarily for surface topography imaging to one capable of characterizing a range of chemical, mechanical, electrical, and magnetic material properties with nanometer resolution. Such characterizations...

Nanostructure Fabrication and Metrology

Completed
This project develops semiconductor nanostructures, especially self-assembled quantum dots and photonic crystals, for a variety of applications including single photonics, laser diodes, and quantum optical metrology. It also develops quantum optical metrology based on other sources and detectors...

The Nanotechnology Xccelerator

Ongoing
The Nanotechnology Xccelerator was announced on September 13, 2022 and was officially accepted for production at Skywater Technology Foundry using the Sky130 technology in Q1 2024. Sky130, which comes in both a conventional and open-source process design kit, is a 5-metal layer process. To...

Operando Measurements of Electrochemical (Charge-transfer) Processes

Completed
There are two ways to study a very fast process such as charge transfer. One can use very high-speed measurement that can follow the effect of the process, or one use a method that is sensitive only to the process itself. Either way has its weakness. Many fast measurements can follow the process...

Optical and Microwave Spectroscopy of Microelectronic Systems

Ongoing
Collaborations with industry leaders have led to new understanding of magnetic damping in advanced materials and replication of our magnetic metrology tools. We investigate fundamental aspects of spin transfer in materials and structures that offer improved performance in future devices such as...

Optical Probes of 2D Magnetic Phenomena

Ongoing
The unique measurement capabilities developed in this Project enable diffraction-limited, optical spectra (both Raman and photoluminescence) to be collected and analyzed as a function of laser energy, polarization, temperature, magnetic field, and device parameters such as current load and back...

Other activities to support government organizations

Ongoing
Recent projects include: Developing uncertainty analyses for an outdoor near-field antenna test rangeWe are analyzing near-field scanning data from the U.S. Army’s Electronic Proving Grounds (EPG) and will then provide technical support to the Army for any necessary corrections to the range’s...

Out-of-Band Emissions Measurements of LTE Devices Operating in the AWS-3 Band

Completed
The project, proposed by Edwards Air Force Base, measured Out-of-Band (OoB) emissions from new Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems operating in bands adjacent to existing incumbent Department of Defense (DoD) Aeronautical Mobile Telemetry (AMT) systems used at government test and training ranges (TTRs...

Photonic Radiometry

Ongoing
Meeting the needs of the photonics industry and anticipating emerging technologies requires investigation and development of improved measurement methods and instrumentation. This project develops state-of-art, absolute microfabricated thermal detectors with absorber coatings consisting of carbon...

Photonic Thermometry

Ongoing
Why do we need reliable temperature metrology? Temperature, the second most measured physical property after time and frequency, is indispensable to innumerable industries, military services, medicine, climate, and weather forecasts – precise, accurate, and rapid temperature metrology enables much...

Power Conditioning Systems for Renewables, Storage, and Microgrids

Completed
Objective: To establish standards and measurement methods, and test for smart grid and microgrid Power Conditioning Systems needed to transition from today’s low penetration of nondispatchable intermittent renewable energy sources to flexible grid operations that can actively adjust to varying grid...

Precision Electro-Mechanical Experiments (PREME)

Ongoing
NIST-4 Kibble Balance Previously called ‘the Electronic Kilogram’ Project, a major component of PREME is the realization of SI unit of mass, the kilogram, using the NIST-4 Kibble balance, the fourth generation of Kibble balances at NIST. This is accomplished through a high-accuracy comparison of...

Precision metrology with integrated photonics

Ongoing
This project develops integrated photonics– devices based on waveguides that are fabricated in a nanoscale device layer on a silicon wafer –for the purposes of exploring nonlinear science, enabling new applications with scalable integrated photonics light sources, and enhancing classical and quantum...

Prototyping Platforms for Emerging Technologies

Ongoing
Emerging technologies aim to overcome traditional memory limitations with higher density, lower power consumption, faster read/write speeds, better endurance, and lower cost [2]. Many new candidate memory elements are analog or stochastic, requiring new testing infrastructure, and the context of...

Proximity Detection for Electronic Contact Tracing

Completed
We are developing performance metrics for not just ranging, but also for detecting close contacts, which in the context of COVID-19 is the situation where two people are less than six feet apart with no obstacles between them. Obviously, the duration of a close contact is important, as it affects...

Quantum Characterization

Ongoing
The BCQT serves as a resource to academic and industry quantum research groups for measurement of superconducting microwave resonators in a well-characterized cryogenic environment using traceable, open-source methods developed in broad consultation with companies, universities, and NIST. This...

Quantum Conductance

Ongoing
The quantum Hall effect (QHE), and devices that exhibit it, will continue to serve as the foundation of the ohm while also expanding its territory into other SI derived units. The world adopted the quantum SI in 2019, and it remains essential that the global metrology community pushes forth and...

Quantum Radiometry

Ongoing
For quantum applications, it is important to generate quantum states of light and detect them with extremely high efficiency. This project explores the metrology challenges associated with precision measurement of single photon sources and detectors. The classical photonic radiometry techniques used...

Quantum Voltage Project

Ongoing
Researchers in the Quantum Voltage Project develop and disseminate highly accurate instruments that exploit the quantum mechanical properties of superconductive devices known as Josephson junctions (JJs), as well as measurement techniques and best-practices for using these instruments. When a JJ is...

Semiconductor Integration of Electronics and Photonics

Ongoing
Using integrated photonics, we generate spectrally flat, dark soliton microresonator frequency combs with accurate alignment to the ITU-T grid. These laser sources support innovation in advanced communication and computation applications. Moreover, technical development in these application areas...
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