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Physical Measurement Laboratory

News and Updates

Displaying 551 - 575 of 1560
gold chip

Counting Down to the New Ampere

After it's all over, your lights will be just as bright, and your refrigerator just as cold. But very soon the ampere -- the SI base unit of electrical current...
chip-sized small-force meter

Measuring Tiny Forces with Light

Photons are bizarre: They have no mass, but they do have momentum. And that allows researchers to do counterintuitive things with photons, such as using light...
NIST's compact gyroscope measures rotation by analyzing patterns of interfering matter waves in an expanding cloud of atoms transitioning between two energy states.

NIST's Compact Gyroscope May Turn Heads

Shrink rays may exist only in science fiction, but similar effects are at work in the real world at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)...
NanoFab Sputter Tool

Upgrades to Sputter Tools

The Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology is upgrading the NanoFab’ s two Denton Vacuum sputtering systems: Sputter 1 and Sputter 2. Both tools will be...
student wearing helmet with multi-colored wires

Detecting Brain Waves with Atomic Vapor

It's really hard to hear what the brain is saying. Neural impulses -- currents of ions moving through channels between the brain's 100 billion neurons at a...
Alex Galli monitors a profilometer using quality control software he implemented and configured during his internship at the CNST.

CNST: From internship to job

A year ago, Alex Galli graduated from the University of Kansas with an interest in nanotechnology but no experience in the field. Now he's employed in a...
Scientist doing work while to his left is a reporter and in front of him is a camera man.

CNST: Lights, camera, action .... award!

Leniart and her crew, including a student reporter, visited the CNST last year, donning bunny suits to film process engineer Gerard Henein in the clean room...
Coplanar wave guide

NIST System Replicated by Chip Maker

A highly sensitive measurement system for the performance of nanoscale magnetic devices, invented and developed at NIST, was successfully replicated recently by...
Weston Tew

SF6 Shows Promise as Mercury Substitute

Elemental mercury – which is being phased out of commercial thermometers worldwide due to safety concerns – may also be replaced as a temperature reference...
cold atom pump teaser image

Powered by Quantum Cycles: Cold-Atom Pump

By manipulating the behavior of particles at a quantum level, scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI, a research partnership of NIST and the University...
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