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Material Measurement Laboratory

Materials Science and Engineering Division

Projects/Programs

Displaying 1 - 25 of 94

Advanced Composites Pilot for the Materials Genome Initiative

Completed
Many computational programs exist that are being used by industry for predicting properties of polymer composites but their general predictive power is limited by how faithfully the microstructure is represented and how realistically the interfaces are handled. The computations are limited by the

Advanced Materials Design: Electronic and Functional Applications

Ongoing
Accelerating Materials Discovery using Machine Learning and AI Using machine learning and AI techniques along with high-throughput DFT calculations materials with specific properties are identified to accelerate the the discovery process for a variety of applications. Some of the specific materials

Advanced Materials Design: Structural Applications

Ongoing
Designing New High Temperature Co Superalloys In collaboration with the NIST CHiMaD center, an ICME approach in being used to develop new Co superalloys that are strengthened using an ordered FCC (L1 2) phase (similar to the related Ni-based superalloys). The design goals for these alloys include
Diagram of In-Situ AFM During Resist Development

Advanced Metrology to Enable Next Generation EUV Photoresists

Ongoing
EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography, the technology that “saved Moore’s Law,” is widely regarded as the future of cutting-edge nanofabrication. It was developed in the United States and U.S. companies in many parts of the EUV ecosystem have established dominance in the field that must be defended
Advancing Power Electronics with Defect Metrology, Key challenges of near market devices of

Advancing Power Electronics with Defect Metrology

Ongoing
Power electronics play a central role in all aspects of electrical energy storage, distribution, conversion, and consumption. Currently, power electronics heavily rely on Si-based insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBT), which have large footprints, are inefficient, and require extensive cooling

Atomistic Potentials and the Future of Nanomaterials Metrology

Ongoing
Atomistic simulations are increasingly being used as a tool to understand and predict properties of materials in systems, such as nanomaterials, where direct measurement is time-consuming or extremely difficult. The success of atomistic simulations depends critically on the fidelity of a specific

Atomistic tools for structure-property investigations

Ongoing
Interatomic Potential Repository The Interatomic Potentials Repository (IPR) provides a source for interatomic potentials (force fields), related files, and evaluation tools to help researchers obtain interatomic models and judge their quality and applicability. The files provided are of known

Automotive Lightweighting

Ongoing
The US auto industry spends $600M per year fixing and tweaking forming dies that do not make correct parts. The primary reason that the dies are inaccurate is that the computer models of the dies utilize materials models that are inaccurate. Upon surveying our industrial partners, we determined that
PHOTOsrm2483andSEM

Carbon Nanotube Reference Materials

Completed
Carbon nanomaterials are expected to play an important role in future technological developments of transistors, photovoltaics, transparent thin film conductors, sensors, and fuel cell electrodes among many potential applications. However, the potential of these materials has been hindered by a lack

Characterization of 3D Photovoltaics

Completed
First Generation (thick layers of crystalline silicon) and Second Generation (thin films of CdTe, CIGS, and related materials) PV devices are both well established in the marketplace, with well defined techniques for fabrication and characterization. Third Generation PV encompasses a wide diversity

Combinatorial Approaches to Thin Film Nanomaterials

Completed
The behavior and performance of nanostructured materials and devices are governed by the chemistry and structure of their surfaces and interfaces. However, chemistry-structure-performance relationships in these systems are complex, so hundreds of experiments can be necessary to determine optimal
IPython Automation

Complete Automation and Distribution of Parallel Simulation Tasks

Ongoing
In computational materials science, many problems require the execution of numerous parallel simulation tasks on High Performance Computing (HPC) resources. Often a single published data point is the result of several parallel tasks executed in a specific sequence. Despite the continual improvement
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Cruciform Multiaxial Mechanical Testing

Ongoing
A new ARRA funded cruciform test machine is being installed in the NIST Center for Automotive Lightweighting. Its capabilities include 500kN load per axis, two DIC strain mapping systems (one for large field mapping and one for zooming in to study localizations or features), a high resolution, high

Crystal Plasticity Modeling of Yield Surface Evolution

A robust multiaxial constitutive law is needed to predict stresses within parts formed from sheet metal to be able to compensate for such phenomena as elastic springback. Ideally, the constitutive law would not need to be "trained" using empirical mechanical property data alone, but would be able to

AI/ML for Data Extraction and Uncertainty Predictions

Ongoing
The Material Measurement Lab at NIST employs artificial intelligence for the prediction and discovery of materials characteristics. Our applications of artificial intelligence (AI) accelerate materials research as well as help the community learn about AI's capabilities and gain confidence in

Deducing Prior Material Deformation from Simple Mechanics

Ongoing
Process-structure-property linkages suggest an opportunity to deduce processing from behavior. Simple imaging experiments provide rich sources of data. Can we deduce prior deformation? Scheme: Thin film plasticity Deform to some reference strain Unload Deform to test strain, image Deduce

Developing a Materials Innovation Infrastructure

Ongoing
Phase Field Community Hub ( PFHub) and Benchmarks The Phase Field Community Hub provides a framework that supports phase field practitioners and code developers participating in an effort to improve quality assurance for phase field codes. The main thrust of this effort is the generation of a set of

DFT Repositories and Informatics

Ongoing
Historically, the printed article has served as the medium de rigueur for the dissemination of scientific information. This works well when the context and results of an experiment or theory fit on a few pages; however, it is insufficient as a publication medium for many computational studies. For

Dimensional Metrology for Nanoscale Patterns

Completed
Dimensional metrology and control is a critical component of semiconductor fabrication. State-of-the-art integrated circuits are comprised of nearly a billion nanoscale transistors linked together by an equally as impressive nanoscale network of conductors, insulators, and capacitors. To ensure that

Dynamic Plasticity: Non-Equilibrium Mechanics

Ongoing
The optimization of high-speed machining processes through powerful finite element modeling techniques is an important pathway to American manufacturing competitiveness in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. Quantitatively accurate simulations of machining rely on robust constitutive

Electrochemistry

Ongoing
Operando Measurements Measurements of the structure and dynamics of metal-electrolyte interfaces are essential for understanding mechanisms of electrocatalysis and electrodeposition that are key to optimization of materials processing and utilization in wet chemical environments. Our measurement

Energy Storage & Delivery

Completed
Our program will address key measurement issues related to structure and dynamics of important classes of PEM materials, including emerging systems like block copolymers, polymer blends, and candidate materials proposed by industry leaders like GM. We are developing advanced methods that illuminate