U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Materials /Materials characterization

Composition & structure

News and Updates

Blog Posts

Close-up shows shiny metal patches with areas of green corrosion and open holes.

Houston, We Have the Engine Remnants: How My Lab Pieced Together a Forgotten Part of an Apollo Rocket

Read more
A small orange is packaged in a plastic container with a lid.

A Polymer Scientist Wrestles — Literally and Figuratively — With the Frustrations of Plastic Packaging

Read more
Diana Ortiz-Montalvo, wearing safety glasses and holding a small circular filter with tweezers, poses with Abigail Lindstrom in the lab.

Microplastics Mystery: Sampling Airborne Microplastics at a Recycling Facility

Read more

Events

Projects and Programs

Multifunctional AM Project Page

Multifunctional 3D Printable Polymer-Metal Composites

Ongoing
Recent advances in additive manufacturing (AM) have positioned metals and polymers as two key materials. Typically, AM of these two materials involves incompatible methods and conditions. The novel multifunctional polymer-metal composites in this project incorporate low-melting alloys with
Catalyst Testbed

X-ray Testbed for Breakthrough Catalyst Measurements

Ongoing
Interested in collaborating? See below What does this project do for industry? Current measurement techniques are unable to follow the reaction pathways during catalysis and are limited to observing only the end products or looking at catalysts outside of realistic reaction conditions. Our new

Microstructure-Property Tools for Structure-Property Design

Ongoing
Microstructure-level Structure-Property Tools OOF: Finite Element Analysis of Microstructures enables materials scientists calculate macroscopic properties from images of real or simulated microstructures. It reads an image, assigns material properties to features in the image, and conducts virtual

NCNR DAC and CCUS efforts

Ongoing
Objectives To advance US competitiveness in Direct Air Capture (DAC) and Carbon Capture, Usage, and Sequestration (CCUS) Use advanced neutron scattering techniques to understand the adsorption process for the most promising materials for adsorption-based carbon capture and provide avenues to

Publications

Materials Discovery in Combinatorial and High-throughput Synthesis and Processing: A New Frontier for SPM

Author(s)
Boris Slautin, Yungtao Liu, Yu Liu, Reece Emery, Seungbum Hong, Astita Dubey, Vladimir Shvartsman, Doru Lupascu, Sheryl Sanchez, Mahshid Ahmadi, Yunseok Kim, Evgheni Strelcov, Keith Brown, Philip Rack, Sergei Kalinin
For over three decades, scanning probe microscopy (SPM) has been a key method for exploring material structures and functionalities at nanometer and often

Three-dimensional nucleation and growth of deformation twins in magnesium

Author(s)
Sangwon Lee, Michael Pilipchuk, Can Yildirim, Duncan Greeley, Qianying Shi, Tracy Berman, Adam Creuziger, Evan Rust, Carsten Detlefs, Veera Sundararaghavan, John Allison, Ashley Bucsek
At two-thirds the weight of aluminum, magnesium alloys have the potential to significantly reduce the fuel consumption of transportation vehicles. These

Software

DTSA II

NIST DTSA-II

NIST DTSA-II builds on the best available algorithms in the literature to simulate, quantify and plan energy dispersive x-ray analysis measurements.

RMCPROFILE

RMCProfile is a free software package (developed as a collaborative effort between scientists at several institutions including NIST), that can fit

Tools and Instruments

Hysitron PI-85 Picoindentor

Hysitron PI-85 Picoindentor

This in-situ indentation system can be integrated into electron microscopes as well as being run in other unusual setups. With a load capacity of 150 mN, this

Awards

Vivek Prabhu

Vivek M. Prabhu Named APS Fellow

For fundamental insight into the chain conformation, structure, phase separation, and interfaces of polyelectrolytes enabled by light and
Mark Stoudt

Mark Stoudt Named ASM Fellow

For outstanding contributions to the scientific understanding of the structure-property relationships of additively manufactured alloys and