Nanoelectronics

News and Updates

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

Microwave Detectors and Multiplexing: NIST Researchers Help Astronomers Examine the Early Universe

January 24, 2024

Perched atop a high plateau in Chile’s Atacama Desert, a long-awaited observatory is beginning to take shape: the largest suite of ground-based telescopes

Do the Bump: NIST Scientists Perfect Miniaturized Technique to Generate Precise Wavelengths of Visible Laser Light

November 28, 2023

In research, sometimes the bumpy path proves to be the best one. By creating tiny, periodic bumps in a miniature racetrack for light, researchers at the

Projects and Programs

$Four examples of Transmission electron diffraction patterns obtained in a scanning electron microscope.$

Analytical Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy in a Scanning Electron Microscope (STEM-in-SEM)

Ongoing

Conventional transmission electron imaging does not necessarily show both strong contrast and high spatial resolution for nanomaterials or soft matter. This is particularly the case for isolated nanostructures or low- Z materials like polymers or biomaterials. For example, consider structures in the

Designing the Nanoworld: Nanostructure, Nanodevices, and Nano-optics

Ongoing

Developing and exploiting nanodevices for quantum and nanotechnologies requires nanoscale and atomic scale modeling of ultrasmall structures, devices, their operation, and their response to probes. Key challenges of understanding physics at the quantum/classical interface and measurement at the

Dynamic EUV Imaging and Spectroscopy for Microelectronics

Ongoing

Collaborations with industry leaders have led us to develop new measurement techniques to improve our understanding thermal transport, spin transport, and nanoscopic (and interfacial) material properties in active device structures. Such capability requires the ability to measure these properties at

Electronic Material Characterization

Ongoing

Manufacturing optimized devices that incorporate newly-emerging materials requires predictable performance throughout device lifetimes. Unexpected degradation in device performance, sometimes leading to failure, is often traceable to poor material reliability. Reliability is rooted in the stability

Publications

Large Area Real-Space Crystallography and Thickness Determination of Mesoscopic Semiconductor Membranes Using Zone Axis Patterns, Cold Field-Emission SEM/STEM, and Analytical S/TEM

July 25, 2025

Author(s)

Vladimir Oleshko, Glenn Holland, Daron Westly, John Villarrubia

Structural and dimensional characterization of layered structures in semiconductors is increasingly important for microelectronics manufacturing because of the

Multi-technique reference measurement of critical dimension and shape for model validation in scanning electron microscopy

April 22, 2025

Author(s)

Wataru Yamane, Daron Westly, Glenn Holland, Yu Yamazawa, Naoto Ito, Andras Vladar, John Villarrubia

In semiconductor device manufacturing, 3D structure measurements of newly complex devices would be valuable alongside conventional scanning electron microscopy

Impact-Ionization-Based High-Endurance One-Transistor Bulk CMOS Cryogenic Memory

March 31, 2025

Author(s)

Pragya Shrestha, Alexander Zaslavsky, Valery Ortiz Jimenez, Jason Campbell, Curt Richter

This paper presents a high-endurance capacitorless one-transistor (1T) cryogenic memory, fabricated in a 180 nm bulk CMOS technology, with a high memory window

High-endurance bulk CMOS one-transistor cryo-memory

February 28, 2025

Author(s)

Alexander Zaslavsky, Pragya Shrestha, Valery Ortiz Jimenez, Jason Campbell, Curt Richter

Previously we reported a compact one-transistor (1T) 180 nm bulk CMOS cryo-memory with a high 10^7 I_1/I_0 memory window and long 800 s retention time based on

Software

MOSAIC

MOSAIC is a modular single-molecule analysis toolbox to decode multi-state single-molecule and nanopore time-series data. Read the documentation for additional

Tools and Instruments

Precision Imaging Facility

The Precision Imaging Facility (PIF) is a cooperative research facility at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) dedicated to the