News and Updates

Displaying 1 - 25 of 37

NIST Study Aims to Improve Utility of the Scanning Electron Microscope

April 25, 2025

Using an electron beam to image the tiniest of defects and patterns on microchips, the scanning electron microscope (SEM) has long been a mainstay of the...

Bullseye! NIST Devises a Method to Accurately Center Quantum Dots Within Photonic Chips

March 18, 2024

Devices that capture the brilliant light from millions of quantum dots, including chip-scale lasers and optical amplifiers, have made the transition from...

Chip Circuit for Light Could Be Applied to Quantum Computations

January 3, 2023

The ability to transmit and manipulate the smallest unit of light, the photon, with minimal loss, plays a pivotal role in optical communications as well as...

nucleic acid nanotechnology illustration

A Revolution Still in the Making: NIST Researchers Chart the Future of Nucleic Acid Nanotechnology

October 27, 2022

Trapped in a microscopic cage made of strands of DNA, molecules of a life-saving drug course through the bloodstream of a cancer patient. Only when receptors on...

No Fib: NIST Unmasks a Superfast Process for Nanoscale Machining

August 23, 2022

Cutting intricate patterns as small as several billionths of a meter deep and wide, the focused ion beam (FIB) is an essential tool for deconstructing and...

Sneezes, Rain Clouds and Ink Jets: NIST Improves the Ability of Optical Microscopes to Measure the Volume of Microdroplets

December 20, 2021

Sneezes, rain clouds, and ink jet printers: They all produce or contain liquid droplets so tiny it would take several billion of them to fill a liter bottle...

Escape From Flatland: Calibration Method Enables Microscopes to Make Accurate Measurements in All 3 Dimensions

June 24, 2021

Conventional microscopes provide essential information about samples in two dimensions — the plane of the microscope slide. But flat is not all that. In many...

NIST Publishes a Beginner’s Guide to DNA Origami

January 8, 2021

In a technique known as DNA origami, researchers fold long strands of DNA over and over again to construct a variety of tiny 3D structures, including miniature...

A novel, low-cost method detects nanoscale contaminants during manufacture of semiconductor devices

October 19, 2020

As computer chips and other electronic devices continue to shrink in size, they become ever more sensitive to contamination. However, detecting the nanoscale...

A man in safety goggles gives a thumbs-up while sitting at a computer.

Spotlight: Theorizing Between Postdoc and Adviser About the Future of DNA Origami

September 22, 2020

Some assembly required — NIST postdoctoral researcher Jacob Majikes takes the smallest fragments of life and combines them into new structures ... or rather...

Spotlight: Addressing the Minuscule Measuring Needs of the Nanotechnology Community

February 21, 2020

A tooth? An angel? A strong man? Instead of seeing patterns in clouds, our scientists go to the microscope! NIST’s Ravi Attota uses a simple optical microscope...

A Bubbly New Way to Detect the Magnetic Fields of Nanometer-Scale Particles

June 10, 2019

As if they were bubbles expanding in a just-opened bottle of champagne, tiny circular regions of magnetism can be rapidly enlarged to provide a precise method...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Improving CD-AFM Measurements from the Tip Down

March 31, 2016

As the sizes of computer chips in electronic devices continue to shrink, traditional measurement tools (e.g., microscopes utilizing visible light) are no longer...

Detecting Effects of 3D Shapes in Nanoscale Chip Features

April 27, 2015

As microchip feature dimensions approach atomic scale, it becomes formidably difficult to measure their size and shape. According to the International...

NIST Shows Ultrasonically Propelled Nanorods Spin Dizzyingly Fast

July 21, 2014

Vibrate a solution of rod-shaped metal nanoparticles in water with ultrasound and they'll spin around their long axes like tiny drill bits. Why? No one yet...

Don't Blink! NIST Studies Why Quantum Dots Suffer from 'Fluorescence Intermittency'

May 20, 2014

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), working in collaboration with the Naval Research Laboratory, have found that a...

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