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Physical Measurement Laboratory

Microsystems and Nanotechnology Division

News and Updates

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NIST Study Resolves Fine Details of How Microscopic Machines Can Fail in the Blink of an Eye

November 27, 2018

How long can tiny gears and other microscopic moving parts last before they wear out? What are the warning signs that these components are about to fail, which...

An electron micrograph showing many blue-colored nanoscale (billionth of a meter) particles of varying sizes and shapes scattered atop a silicon wafer.

Connecting the (Nano) Dots: NIST Says Big-Picture Thinking Can Advance Nanoparticle Manufacturing

August 22, 2018

Nanoparticle manufacturing, the production of material units less than 100 nanometers in size (100,000 times smaller than a marble), is proving the adage that...

Through a Prism Brightly: A New Way to Measure the Light-Warping Properties of Hyperbolic Metamaterials

June 18, 2018

Manipulating light in a variety of ways—shrinking its wavelength and allowing it to travel freely in one direction while stopping it cold in another--hyperbolic...

A New Way to Measure Energy in Microscopic Machines

June 8, 2018

What drives cells to live and engines to move? It all comes down to a quantity that scientists call “free energy,” essentially the energy that can be extracted...

NIST Puts the Optical Microscope Under the Microscope to Achieve Atomic Accuracy

May 22, 2018

Over the last two decades, scientists have discovered that the optical microscope can be used to detect, track and image objects much smaller than their...

Illustration of sunlight shining on solar panel covered with nanometer-scale beads.

Psst! A Whispering Gallery for Light Boosts Solar Cells

April 13, 2018

Trapping light with an optical version of a whispering gallery, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a...

A Stopwatch for Nanofluids: NIST Files Provisional Patent Application for Measuring Nanoliter Flow Rates

January 17, 2018

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has filed a provisional patent application for a microflow measurement system, about the size of a...

sphere-shaped particles of different sizes on a nanometer-scale staircase with 7 steps

Atomic Blasting Creates New Devices to Measure Nanoparticles

December 14, 2017

Like sandblasting at the nanometer scale, focused beams of ions ablate hard materials to form intricate three-dimensional patterns. The beams can create tiny...

Illustration showing lines of electrical force around an opening to a cell.

Scientists Channel Graphene to Understand Filtration and Ion Transport into Cells

December 8, 2017

Tiny pores at a cell’s entryway act as miniature bouncers, letting in some electrically charged atoms—ions—but blocking others. Operating as exquisitely...

NIST Scientists Discover How to Switch Liver Cancer Cell Growth from 2-D to 3-D Structures

November 15, 2017

Paving the way for testing experimental drugs in more realistic environments, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have...

Image showing several lines of a circuit, with an inset showing a device that has both a quantum dot and a network of waveguides

Hybrid Circuit Combines Single-Photon Generator and Efficient Waveguides on One Chip

November 7, 2017

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their collaborators have taken a new step forward in the quest to build quantum...

Cavity coating in flat red layer below blue-green light beam

Plasmons in an Open Box Create Miniature Laser

October 12, 2017

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed the first miniature laser in which the light is guided along the floor of...

Researchers Find New Way to Manipulate Magnetism

September 14, 2017

In a pioneering effort to control, measure and understand magnetism at the atomic level, researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and...

Even Better than DNA Origami

September 1, 2017

DNA is the stuff of life, but it is also the stuff of nanotechnology. Because molecules of DNA with complementary chemical structures recognize and bind to one...

scanning electron micrograph of a single phononic-crystal cell

New Design Lets Micro-Clock Resonators Ring Like a Bell

August 30, 2017

You can’t hear most of them, but the world is running on different kinds of mechanical oscillations. For example, inside the average electronic wristwatch is a...

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...

Turning Back Time: Watching Rust Transform into Iron

April 4, 2017

Using a state-of-the-art microscopy technique, experimenters at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have witnessed a...

Measuring Acceleration with Light

March 29, 2017

Most people have never seen an accelerometer -- a device that measures change in velocity -- and wouldn’t know where to look. Yet accelerometers have become...

How To Tell When a Nanoparticle is Out of Shape

December 20, 2016

Nanoparticles -- those with diameters less than one-thousandth the width of a human hair -- are increasingly prevalent in high technology, medicine, and...

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...

For Wearable Electronic Devices, NIST Shows Plastic Holes Are Golden

November 23, 2016

In science, sometimes the best discoveries come when you’re exploring something else entirely. That’s the case with recent findings from the National Institute...

Drawing of a spiral delay line heater element, designed with the CNST Nanolithography Toolbox software

New Nanoscale Design Software Available Online

October 21, 2016

A recently developed CNST software package that designs difficult-to-draw nanoscale shapes, including spirals, S-bends, and tapered structures is now available...

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...

CNST's Nano-fare Draws a Crowd at the Maker Faire

June 21, 2016

At last weekend's National Maker Faire in Washington, D.C., tech-savvy tinkerers, crafters and educators gave the public the chance to interact with a...

False-color scanning electron micrograph of a nanophotonic frequency converter

New Nanodevice Shifts Light's Color at Single-Photon Level

April 18, 2016

Converting a single photon from one color, or frequency, to another is an essential tool in quantum communication, which harnesses the subtle correlations...

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