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Projects/Programs

  • --Physical Measurement Laboratory
    Topic Area
      Displaying 1 - 25 of 472

      Aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy

      Ongoing
      As devices continue to become smaller, more complex, and more highly integrated, atomic scale measurements of their structure, chemistry, strain, and electric field are increasingly crucial for device design, reliability, and optimization. The aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron

      Absolute cryogenic infrared radiometry at the LBIR facility

      Ongoing
      The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), and subsequently the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), have motivated NIST's work developing calibration methods and standards for space-based sensors used in missile

      Accelerator Facilities

      Ongoing
      The Division's accelerator facilities continue to support a broad range of research efforts in the areas of industrial and medical dosimetry, homeland security, radiation-hardness testing and materials-effects studies. Topics of research during this reporting period included: (1) a broad-energy

      Accurate Mapping of Thermal Properties at the Nanoscale

      Ongoing
      Continuous advances in the performance and functionality of semiconductor devices have been driven by scale reduction, incorporation of new and nanomaterials, and by heterogeneous integration (HI). However, such scaling and integrated architecture has rendered existing thermal metrology inadequate

      AC-DC Difference

      Ongoing
      The use of thermal converters for ac voltage metrology was introduced by Frank Hermach at NIST in 1952. The basic thermal converter is a thermoelement, consisting of a thermocouple positioned at the midpoint of a heater wire, enclosed in an evacuated bulb. The thermoelement senses the heat generated

      Acoustic Techniques in Fluid Metrology

      Ongoing
      We use acoustic techniques in gases to measure the thermodynamic temperature of a gas in a spherical or cylindrical cavity, the optical absorption in gases and aerosols (in collaboration with NIST’s Chemical Sciences Division) the quantity of gas in a large vessel or tank, and gas flow into/from a

      Acoustic Thermometry

      Completed
      Data from the NIST acoustic thermometer will form an improved basis for the equations used with platinum resistance thermometry, which is the primary mechanism to disseminate accurate temperature standards. Objective: To obtain measurements of thermodynamic temperature in the range between 273 K and

      Advanced Dimensional Measurement Systems

      Ongoing
      New dimensional measurement technologies provide significant benefits to industry such as increasing measurement throughput, enabling new manufacturing process and providing more detailed part information for manufacturing process improvement. However, before purchasing and using new measurement

      Advanced Magnetic Imaging

      Ongoing
      Ultra-low field (ULF) MRI MRI systems are widely used for clinical diagnostics where imaging is typically done in high-field magnets ranging from 1.5 T to 7 T to achieve a manageable signal-to-noise ratio needed for short imaging times (few minutes) and high resolution (1 mm or less). Ultra-low

      Advanced Metrology to Enable Next Generation EUV Photoresists

      Ongoing
      EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography, the technology that “saved Moore’s Law,” is widely regarded as the future of cutting-edge nanofabrication. It was developed in the United States and U.S. companies in many parts of the EUV ecosystem have established dominance in the field that must be defended

      Advanced Microwave Photonics

      Ongoing
      NIST is home to a broad interdisciplinary program in quantum information science. NIST is exploring multiple implementations of qubits and strategies for taking advantage of quantum effects to compute, simulate, and improve fundamental measurement strategies. Josephson junctions are at the heart of

      Advancing PEEM-based Metrology

      Ongoing
      With the rise of emergent material systems, nanoscale devices and components, there is a need to assess their electronic properties at similar length scales. Bulk-sensitive measurements provide characteristic information averaged over the sample or device, and these properties may not be uniform

      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

      Air Speed Metrology

      Ongoing
      NIST's wind tunnel has two interchangeable test sections. (See Fig. 1) The upper test section has a uniform cross section; the lower test section has a contracted zone in its center to achieve higher velocities. Upper test section: 2.1 m high × 1.5 m wide × 12 m long; speeds to: 45 m/s (100 mi/hour)

      Amplifiers

      Ongoing
      We have developed parametric amplifiers based on two different technologies: Josephson Junctions and superconductors with high kinetic inductance, a representation of the kinetic energy of superconducting Cooper-pair charge carriers. Junction-based parametric amplifiers (JPAs) are well suited for

      Aperture area measurements

      Ongoing
      Aperture area measurements are performed at NIST’s aperture area measurement facility, which combines a precise interferometric motion stage with high-resolution optical microscopy. This non-contact method is especially well suited for the measurement of defining apertures with knife edges that are

      Applications of Quantum Information

      Ongoing
      Human-scale physical phenomenon represent the emergent, complex behavior of simple, microscopic laws. In the past twenty years, improved understanding of these microscopic laws have suggested that typical large-scale systems — those used in modern day technology from transistors to mechanical

      Applied: Methods in Neutron Detection and Spectroscopy

      Completed
      Energetic neutrons (> 1 MeV) play a variety of important roles from dosimetry to the fundamental sciences. Fast neutrons can be an often under-appreciated but significant biological dose from accelerators and nuclear facilities, serve as a way of detecting nuclear materials, and can often yield

      Applied: Photon Assisted Neutron Detector (PhAND)

      Ongoing
      Due to the simplicity of the PhAND physics package, any number of detector configurations can be deployed. Basic detector operation is illustrated in Fig. 1. Incident neutrons are absorbed in a 10B film and the charged daughter products (𝜶 7Li) enter the surrounding xenon where they produce xenon

      Applied: Quantum Sensors for Charged Particle Detection

      Ongoing
      Quantum cryogenic detectors have proven very promising for x-ray and gamma-ray spectroscopy. The suppression of thermal noise due to cryogenic (sub-1K) temperatures leads to excellent energy resolution while still allowing for large collection areas and high absorption efficiency. Specifically, the

      Applied spectroradiometry and imaging metrology

      Ongoing
      Stray light correction Array instruments are subject to measurement errors arising from detector's blooming, smearing, nonlinearity, and instrument's stray light. These errors (except the stray-light error) can either be avoided or corrected in many cases. However, the stray light, due to

      Applied: Wide-Angle Neutron Polarization Analysis

      Completed
      We have developed a polarizer-analyzer-spin flipper system based solely on 3He spin filters on the Multi-Axis Crystal Spectrometer (MACS) at the NIST Center for Neutron Research. The compact system is housed by a 36 cm diameter, vertical solenoid. Neutrons are polarized by transmission through a