Nanomechanics

News and Updates

Quantum Thermometer or Optical Refrigerator?

June 22, 2017

In an arranged marriage of optics and mechanics, physicists have created microscopic structural beams that have a variety of powerful uses when light strikes

schematic of laser light interacting with a plasmonic gap resonator

NIST Device for Detecting Subatomic-Scale Motion Has Potential Robotics, Homeland Security Applications

December 15, 2016

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new device that measures the motion of super-tiny particles traversing

NIST Unveils Forensic Technique to Measure Mechanical Properties of Evidence

November 1, 2016

You may have seen it on CSI: The star examines hair from a crime scene and concludes its color or texture looks like the defendant’s hair, or maybe his dog’s

NIST Illuminates Transfer of Nanoscale Motion Through Microscale Machine

September 12, 2016

From the printing press to the jet engine, mechanical machines with moving parts have been a mainstay of technology for centuries. As U.S. industry develops

Projects and Programs

Control of Magnetic Nanoparticles for Nanoscale Manipulation of Fluids and Materials (Archived)

Scientists and engineers currently have a growing library of synthetic microscale and nanoscale swimmers which affect the hydrodynamics of their surroundings in

The SPMforAMP project develops novel SPM methods

Scanning Probe Microscopy for Advanced Materials and Processes

Local material-property information is essential to evaluate emerging micro- and nanoscale materials, which many manufacturers would like to leverage for their

Scanning Probe Microscopy Measurement and Standards

This project is tasked with enabling accurate nanomechanical property measurements on materials. Our goal is to develop standard reference materials and

Schematic of approach to clean water membranes

Membranes for Clean Water

This project provides measurement solutions that probe the surface and internal structure of polymer membranes used in water purification, and correlate that

Publications

Shoulder fillet effects in strength distributions of MEMS components

November 6, 2020

Author(s)

Frank W. DelRio, Brad L. Boyce, Jake T. Benzing, Lawrence H. Friedman, Robert F. Cook

The failure forces and fracture strengths of polysilicon MEMS components in the form of stepped tensile bars with shoulder fillets were measured using a

Isomorphic contact resonance force microscopy and piezoresponse force microscopy of an AlN thin film: demonstration of a new contact resonance technique

June 16, 2020

Author(s)

Lawrence H. Robins, Matthew D. Brubaker, Jason P. Killgore, Ryan Tung

We present a new contact resonance force microscopy (CRFM) imaging technique, isomorphic contact resonance (iso-CR), that acquires data at a constant contact

Wavelength transduction from a 3D microwave cavity to telecom using piezoelectric optomechanical crystals

April 29, 2020

Author(s)

Hugh Ramp, T.J. Clark, Brett Hauer, Caleb Doolin, Krishna Coimbatore Balram, Kartik A. Srinivasan, John Davis

Frequency stabilization of nanomechanical resonators using thermally invariant strain engineering

April 6, 2020

Author(s)

Mingkang Wang, Rui Zhang, Bojan R. Ilic, Vladimir A. Aksyuk, Yuxiang Liu

Microfabricated mechanical resonators enable precision measurement and transduction techniques from atomic force microscopy and inertial sensing to magnetometry