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

Projects and Programs

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

Micro- and nano-optomechanical systems

Ongoing

Our primary current research direction involves the use of fabricated devices with sub-wavelength periodicity (photonic crystals) as optomechanical elements. Such structures enable a rich variety of devices, including mirrors, polarizers, and filters, in a configuration that couples naturally to

Nanotribology for Nanomanufacturing (Archived)

Completed

Friction and wear are major causes of mechanical failures and dissipative energy losses. These shortfalls account for a significant portion of the annual gross domestic product in the United States, amounting to approximately $800 billion in 2010. It is estimated that tens of billions of U.S

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

Integrated photonic optomechanical atomic force microscopy probes batch fabricated using deep UV photolithography

June 3, 2023

Author(s)

Diego Perez Morelo, Mingkang Wang, Venkatesh Madhaven, Mogana Sathisivan, Charlie Tay, Vladimir Aksyuk

Chip-scale planar nanofabricated optomechanical devices that optically couple a mechanical moving nanostructure to an on-chip photonic cavity of high quality

Nonlinear Sideband Cooling to a Cat State of Motion

May 25, 2023

Author(s)

Bradley Hauer, Joshua Combes, John Teufel

The ability to prepare a macroscopic mechanical resonator into a quantum superposition state is an outstanding goal of cavity optomechanics. Here, we propose a

Beating thermal noise in a dynamic signal measurement by a nanofabricated cavity-optomechanical sensor

March 15, 2023

Author(s)

Mingkang Wang, Diego Perez Morelo, Georg Ramer, Georges Pavlidis, Jeffrey Schwartz, Liya Yu, Robert Ilic, Andrea Centrone, Vladimir Aksyuk

Thermal fluctuations often impose both fundamental and practical measurement limits on high-performance sensors, motivating the development of techniques that

Certification of Standard Reference Material® 3461 Reference Cantilevers for AFM Spring Constant Calibration

August 15, 2022

Author(s)

Richard S. Gates, William Alexander Osborn, Mark McLean, Gordon A. Shaw, James J. Filliben

A batch of 94 silicon chips containing arrays of uniform rectangular cantilevers were microfabricated from a single silicon wafer and their stiffnesses and