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Mass metrology

News and Updates

A Better Balance for Tiny Liquid Masses

Scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are developing a mass balance to measure miniscule amounts of liquid with much higher

Mass Revolution: Kibble Balances for All

NIST is working on a big project in a small package. When you want to weigh something – anything – in the United States, whether it’s a truck full of cargo or a

Projects and Programs

Quantifying the environmental contributions to mass change

Ongoing
Experiments using two types of centimeter scale oscillators are described: the double paddle oscillator (DPO) and a commercial quartz crystal microbalance (QCM). Double Paddle Oscillator (DPO) Since mass changes are mostly on the surface of mass artifacts, we have implemented a micro-weighing sensor

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

Strain Measurement for Semiconductor Devices

Ongoing
Mechanical strain is hugely important to semiconductor devices and packages while also being difficult to measure accurately. Strain is engineered into CMOS channels to improve carrier mobility for higher performance at lower power but is also intrinsically present from manufacturing processes where

Publications

The Quantum Electro-Mechanical Metrology Suite

Author(s)
Frank Seifert, Lorenz Keck, David B. Newell, Darine El Haddad
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is building a robust open-source hardware and software Quantum Electro-Mechanical Metrology Suite

Gravimetric deposition of microliter drops with radiometric confirmation

Author(s)
Denis E. Bergeron, Richard Essex, Svetlana Nour, Gordon A. Shaw, R. Michael Verkouteren, Ryan P. Fitzgerald
A manual gravimetric dispensing technique is demonstrated using a micropipettor modified for use with removeable microcapillaries. Liquid scintillation sources