Patents

The United States Patent and Trademark Office defines a patent as, “…a property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to an inventor to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States…” NIST creates hundreds of new technologies each year and some are patented. NIST patents support and champion the development of inventions and encourages the commercialization of those inventions through licenses. NIST’s priority on commercialization supports the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) which identifies, as a priority, the transition of federally funded innovations from the laboratory to the marketplace as well as increasing private sector investment in later-stage research and development. For more information on the PMA visit: https://www.performance.gov/PMA/Presidents_Management_Agenda.pdf

NIST has licensed numerous technologies for almost all industry sectors (e.g., healthcare, homeland security, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, etc.) and seeks government, industry, and academia to partner and license NIST technologies. Visit the NIST Technology Partnerships Office website (nist.gov/tpo) to explore the most effective partnering models and technology transfer mechanisms for your organization.

Take a moment now and explore NIST patented technologies and envision what could take your enterprise to the next level. To view all of NIST patented technologies from prior years, visit the Federal Laboratory Consortium: https://www.federallabs.org/labs/national-institute-of-standards-and-technology-nist-0

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Recent Patents

Optical Power Meter

NEW ENABLING TECHNOLOGY NIST scientists have devised a radically new method of determining laser power by measuring the radiation pressure exerted by a laser beam on a reflective surface. High-accuracy power measurements are essential to many manufacturing processes that depend on precise control of

Differential compensator to reduce uncertainty in determination of movement of a structural member

Inventors

Matthew S. Hoehler, Christopher Smith

Patent Description This invention is a method for estimating thermal expansion in a wire attached to a moving target. In typical tests it is important to measure the motion of a specimen (target) with respect to a fixed reference point, and this is often accomplished by attaching a wire or thread

Optical Parametric Oscillator

Inventors

Keith R. Lykke, Steven W. Brown, John T. Woodward

Patent Description This invention is a light source that provides high-power (1W to 5W), narrow line-width (<1 nm), quasi-continuous wave (80 MHz) light that can be tuned in wavelength from 340 nm to 2300 nm. See figure below. The light source is fully automated, solid state, and fits on a

Imaging Spectrometer

Inventors

Norman A. Sanford, Ann Chiaramonti Debay

Patent Description NIST has invented a new laser-assisted atom probe tomography (L-APT). This tool uses photoionization at extreme ultra-violet (EUV) laser photon energies in the approximate range of l 0-100 eV to promote photoionization and photo-disassociation of atomic species and molecular

Hub and Spoke System for Detecting and Locating Gas Leaks

Inventors

Gregory B Rieker, Ian Coddington, Nathan R. Newbury, Kuldeep Prasad, Anna Karion

Patent Description The current practice for detecting methane leaks is still in its infancy. There are several environmental regulations that have driven the development of Forward-looking Infrared (FLIR) cameras, thermographic cameras that senses infrared radiation, for detection of Volatile

Massively parallel wafer-level reliability system and process for massively parallel wafer-level reliability testing

Inventors

Kin Cheung

Patent Description The massively parallel reliability (MPR) system is a measurement platform where thousands of semiconductor devices are tested for long term reliability. The system is designed to perform some of the standard reliability tests for certain degradation mechanisms in semiconductor

A method and process for imposing fine-grained next generation access controls over RDBMS SQL Queries and database objects

Inventors

Joshua Roberts, Gopi Katwala, David Ferraiolo, Serban Gavrila

Patent Description The Policy Machine is an access control framework that served as the basis for the development of an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)/ the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS – the central U.S. forum dedicated to creating technology

Broadband Microwave Phase Shift Detector

Inventors

Kin P. Cheung, Jason T Ryan, Jason Campbell

Patent Description The new NIST detector senses very small phase shifts in a highly balanced microwave bridge. An electric field optimized microwave probe, in close proximity to a sample, serves to perturb the degree of bridge balance due to a change in effective dielectric constant of the sample

Noncontact Resonameter, Process for making and use of same

Inventors

Jan Obrzut, Nathan D. Orloff, Christian J. Long

Patent Description A noncontact resonameter includes: a resonator to: produce an excitation signal including a field; subject a sample to the excitation signal; produce a first resonator signal in a presence of the sample and the excitation signal, the first resonator signal including: a first

Anti-Counterfeiting Article, Process for Making and Using Same

Inventors

Yaw S. Obeng, Joseph J. Kopanski, Jung-Joon Ahn

Patent Description This invention provides for a new and useful metrology to enable counterfeit detection system capable of uniquely marking items by encoding information in their physical structure at the nanoscale. The system depends on rapidly encoding information in the physical structure of an

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