Nanomechanics

News and Updates

Quantum Thermometer or Optical Refrigerator?

June 22, 2017

In an arranged marriage of optics and mechanics, physicists have created microscopic structural beams that have a variety of powerful uses when light strikes

schematic of laser light interacting with a plasmonic gap resonator

NIST Device for Detecting Subatomic-Scale Motion Has Potential Robotics, Homeland Security Applications

December 15, 2016

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new device that measures the motion of super-tiny particles traversing

NIST Unveils Forensic Technique to Measure Mechanical Properties of Evidence

November 1, 2016

You may have seen it on CSI: The star examines hair from a crime scene and concludes its color or texture looks like the defendant’s hair, or maybe his dog’s

Projects and Programs

Nanoplasmonics and Three-Dimensional Plasmonic Metamaterials

Ongoing

Metamaterials are tailor-made photonic composites--combinations of materials designed to achieve optical properties not seen in nature. The properties stem from

A micromechanical bulk acoustic resonator that uses phononic crystal tethers to achieve a quality factor approaching the fundamental dissipation limit (fxQ can be as large as 1.2 x 1013 Hz)

Micro- and Nanoelectromechanical Systems

Completed

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) are integrated devices with critical applications in sensing, timing, signal processing, and biomedical diagnostics, and

Scanning Probe Microscopy Calibrations and Standards

Ongoing

This project is tasked with enabling accurate nanomechanical property measurements on materials through calibrations and standards. Our goal is to develop

High Impact Ballistic Testing of Polymer Films

Polymer Mechanics

Ongoing

Polymers play a central role in high rate impact mitigation applications ranging from helmets, to body armor, to aircraft and spacecraft protective coatings. A

Publications

Integrated photonic optomechanical atomic force microscopy probes batch fabricated using deep UV photolithography

June 3, 2023

Author(s)

Diego Perez Morelo, Mingkang Wang, Venkatesh Madhaven, Mogana Sathisivan, Charlie Tay, Vladimir Aksyuk

Chip-scale planar nanofabricated optomechanical devices that optically couple a mechanical moving nanostructure to an on-chip photonic cavity of high quality

Nonlinear Sideband Cooling to a Cat State of Motion

May 25, 2023

Author(s)

Bradley Hauer, Joshua Combes, John Teufel

The ability to prepare a macroscopic mechanical resonator into a quantum superposition state is an outstanding goal of cavity optomechanics. Here, we propose a

Beating thermal noise in a dynamic signal measurement by a nanofabricated cavity-optomechanical sensor

March 15, 2023

Author(s)

Mingkang Wang, Diego Perez Morelo, Georg Ramer, Georges Pavlidis, Jeffrey Schwartz, Liya Yu, Robert Ilic, Andrea Centrone, Vladimir Aksyuk

Thermal fluctuations often impose both fundamental and practical measurement limits on high-performance sensors, motivating the development of techniques that

Certification of Standard Reference Material® 3461 Reference Cantilevers for AFM Spring Constant Calibration

August 15, 2022

Author(s)

Richard S. Gates, William Alexander Osborn, Mark McLean, Gordon A. Shaw, James J. Filliben

A batch of 94 silicon chips containing arrays of uniform rectangular cantilevers were microfabricated from a single silicon wafer and their stiffnesses and