Analytical chemistry

News and Updates

A Safer Way for Police to Test Drug Evidence

September 17, 2019

Scientists have demonstrated a way for police to quickly and safely test whether a baggie or other package contains

A woman with goggles prepares a sample near a large instrument.

How Milk Does an Animal Body Good

May 7, 2019

It has been called the world’s most perfect food, and there’s unequivocal evidence that it can fight off disease and

Two vials, one with heroin and one with an equivalent dose of fentanyl, which is a much smaller amount.

New Protocol for Measuring Background Levels of Drugs in Crime Labs

September 25, 2018

When crime lab chemists handle evidence that contains illegal drugs, trace amounts of those drugs are inevitably

Data-Sharing Website May Speed Response to New Illegal Drugs

July 5, 2018

The drug overdose epidemic currently gripping the nation is so tenacious in part because it’s being driven by fentanyl,

Projects and Programs

NIST Tools for Cannabis Laboratory Quality Assurance

NIST is developing an integrated measurement services program for Cannabis to ensure the quality of routine analysis in forensic laboratories, third party

Potential Primary Measurement Tool for the Quantification of DNA

The accurate mass determination of DNA and other nucleic acids is of critical importance in many clinical diagnoses and in forensic and molecular biological

Fossil Fuel Standard Reference Materials

To support regulatory and industry requirements for reference materials and standards, NIST produces and maintains a large inventory of fossil fuel SRMs that

Expression of Stable Isotopically Labeled Proteins for Use as Internal Standards for Mass Spectrometric Quantitation of Clinical Protein Biomarkers

Proteins are of significant interest as potential indicators (biomarkers) of health or disease. Clinical methods employed to measure these analytes are often

Publications

Contactless Resonant Cavity Dielectric Spectroscopic Studies of Recycled Office Papers

November 5, 2019

Author(s)

Mary Kombolias, Jan Obrzut, Michael T. Postek, Dianne L. Poster, Yaw S. Obeng

Current product composition and quality test methods for the paper and pulp industry are rooted in wet-bench chemistry techniques which are highly subjective.

Sensitive Method for the Confident Identification of Genetically Variant Peptides in Human Hair

October 31, 2019

Author(s)

Zheng Zhang, Meghan C. Burke, William E. Wallace, Yuxue Liang, Sergey L. Sheetlin, Yuri A. Mirokhin, Dmitrii V. Tchekhovskoi, Stephen E. Stein

Recent reports have demonstrated that genetically variant peptides (GVPs) derived from human hair shaft proteins can be used to differentiate individuals of

Method Development for Contactless Resonant Cavity Dielectric Spectroscopic Studies of Cellulosic Paper

October 4, 2019

Author(s)

Mary Kombolias, Jan Obrzut, Michael T. Postek, Dianne L. Poster, Yaw S. Obeng

The current analytical techniques for characterizing printing and graphic arts substrates are largely ex situ and destructive. This limits the amount of data

Calibration

October 2, 2019

Author(s)

Lane C. Sander

In the context of chemical metrology, calibration is the process of relating a known quantity of an analyte to the corresponding measured instrumental response

Software

NIST Mass and Fragment Calculator Software

January 31, 2019

The NIST Mass and Fragment Calculator is a program written in Visual Basic which calculates the mass of an input peptide or protein sequence along with m/z ions

NIST DTSA-II

February 1, 2018

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

JB95 Spectral fitting program

February 19, 2016

A graphical user interface program, JB95 , based on a Windows 95 © API platform has been written in the C programming language to aid in the analysis of complex

Custom Lifetime Imaging Platform (CLIP)

CLIP is an analysis program for fluorescence lifetime images. It provides the user with the ability to fit or calculate the phasor plots for lifetime decays

Tools and Instruments

Milli X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer

The Eagle III Micro XRF unit is similar to a traditional XRF unit, with the primary difference being that the X-rays are focused by a polycapillary optic into a

Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy

Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Spectroscopy is a spectroscopic technique in which the vibrational modes of the molecules comprising a material of interest

TESCAN MIRA3 for automated electron microscopy

A TESCAN MIRA3 Schottky field-emission scanning electron microscope with 4 30 mm 2 silicon x-ray drift detectors which has been automated for particle and

Continuous-wave terahertz spectrometer

The continuous-wave terahertz spectrometer makes use of two near-infrared lasers. The first laser is a fixed-frequency cw ring Ti:Saph laser operating near 840

Awards

Lane Sander Honored by American Chemical Society

The award consists of $5,000 and a certificate. Up to $2,500 for travel expenses to the meeting at which the award will be presented will be...

David Long Honored with PECASE

The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) is the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government to...