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.

Physical Measurement Laboratory

Applied Physics Division

Projects/Programs

Displaying 1 - 25 of 58
Schematics and diffraction patterns

Aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy

Ongoing
As devices continue to become smaller, more complex, and more highly integrated, atomic scale measurements of their structure, chemistry, strain, and electric field are increasingly crucial for device design, reliability, and optimization. The aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron
Advanced Magnetic Imaging staff

Advanced Magnetic Imaging

Ongoing
Ultra-low field (ULF) MRI MRI systems are widely used for clinical diagnostics where imaging is typically done in high-field magnets ranging from 1.5 T to 7 T to achieve a manageable signal-to-noise ratio needed for short imaging times (few minutes) and high resolution (1 mm or less). Ultra-low
qim image

Advanced Microwave Photonics

Ongoing
NIST is home to a broad interdisciplinary program in quantum information science. NIST is exploring multiple implementations of qubits and strategies for taking advantage of quantum effects to compute, simulate, and improve fundamental measurement strategies. Josephson junctions are at the heart of

Development of differential absorption LIDAR Technologies

Ongoing
The basic processes involved in elastic backscatter LIDAR are as follows. A laser emits a pulse of light (typically a few nanoseconds), and as the pulse propagates, the photons interact with molecules and aerosol particles. Some of these, the interactions with aerosols, such as Mie and Rayleigh
EUV graphs

Dynamic EUV Imaging and Spectroscopy for Microelectronics

Ongoing
Collaborations with industry leaders have led us to develop new measurement techniques to improve our understanding thermal transport, spin transport, and nanoscopic (and interfacial) material properties in active device structures. Such capability requires the ability to measure these properties at
Dynamic EUV Metrology of Nanoscopic Thermal Transport in Active Devices

Dynamic EUV Metrology of Nanoscopic Thermal Transport in Active Devices

Ongoing
Heat is greatly impeding progress in microelectronics, which is only getting worse as dimensions are reduced and device architectures move more towards being 3-dimensional. The dynamics and physics of nanoscale thermal transport are unknown and dynamic measurements of active devices at this scale do
circuit

Emerging Hardware for Artificial Intelligence

Ongoing
Here is a brief description of our work with links to recent papers from our investigations, broadly classified as experimental and modeling. A brief overview of Josephson junction-based bio-inspired computing can be found in our review article. Experimental We have facilities to develop our devices
A time series of a MoS2 flake exposed to increasing time under electrical stress shows the growth of defects denoted with red and yellow areas over time. S= source and D = drain electrode.

Evaluation of 2D and WBG Material Quality Toward Device Reliability

Ongoing
Two-dimensional (2D) and wide band gap (WBG) materials are some of the latest materials classes having the potential to be transformative because of their high carrier mobilities, tunable bandgap, and atomic-scale film thicknesses. Unexpected degradation and failure in device performance is often
extreme atom probe tomography illustration

Extreme Atom Probe Tomography

Ongoing
Sub-nanometer-resolved 3-D chemical mapping of any atom in any solid continues to be an imperative goal of materials research. If reduced to practice, it would have profound scientific, engineering, and economic impacts on U.S. industries collectively worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Such
bolometer

Far infrared remote sensing

Ongoing
The Total Solar Irradiance and the outgoing Earth radiance are long term measurements that have been monitored from space for over 40 years. Microfabricated, absolutely calibrated bolometers with vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes that are developed by this project provide a more accurate and more
Electron microscopy images

GaN Nanowire Growth

Ongoing
Selective epitaxy: We have demonstrated that the diameter and placement of nanowires can be controlled by using silicon nitride (SiNx) masks on top of MBE-grown buffer layers (see figure). With electron beam lithography, several patterns with 3 mm die size that provide over 100,000 controlled
nanowires

GaN Nanowire Metrology and Applications

Ongoing
GaN Nanowire LEDs: Our selective epitaxy methods and dopant characterization techniques have enabled fabrication of arrays of nanowire LEDs with controlled location and spatial layout. This development is complemented by modeling of the carrier flow and recombination. These LEDs were combined to
High Amplification Laser-pressure Optic

High Amplification Laser-pressure Optic (HALO)

Ongoing
We have assembled a high-accuracy laser power meter based on radiation pressure with multiple reflections of the laser on the sensing mirror. A custom electrostatic force balance supports a high-reflectivity sensing mirror upon which a high-power continuous wave laser beam is incident at ~ 45
Today, device performance needs to be evaluated to determine success of materials development. This project will advance metrology for magnetic materials and develop models to predict device performance.

High Speed Metrology for Magnetoelectronic Devices and Models

Ongoing
The U.S. Semiconductor industry is integrating ferromagnet-based microelectronic devices such as magnetic RAM (MRAM) into existing silicon-based technologies. MRAM has much shorter write times and higher write endurance than the embedded Flash currently used. These properties makes MRAM highly
x-ray laser welding setup

High-Power Laser Applications

Ongoing
Measurement challenges Traditional measurements of laser power or energy involve absorbing the laser light and measuring the resulting temperature increase of the absorber. However, as the power and total energy delivered by these lasers increases, thermal management, absorber size, and response

Hybrid Ferromagnetic-Superconductor Memory

Ongoing
The core of the research program is to understand how the transit of a supercurrent through a series of ferromagnetic films affects both its amplitude, phase, and spin state, which can result from magnetic fields within the element, interfacial spin-filtering effects, and exchange interactions
decorative image

Hybrid Ferromagnetic-Superconductor Systems

Ongoing
The main goal of the research program is to develop and understand the physics of systems in which a ferromagnet is strongly interacting with (i.e., coupled to) microwave and optical photons. When these measurements are performed using microfabricated resonators, they represent a novel metrology to
Transmission Electron Micrograph

Hybrid Quantum Optomechanical Systems with Solid-State Artificial Atoms

Ongoing
Quantum Dot – Surface Acoustic Wave Microwave-to-Optical Transducers In this project, we focus on coupling nanoscale acoustic resonators with InAs quantum dot (QD) single photon sources (Fig. 1). At ultra-low temperatures, such as those in a dilution refrigerator, the acoustic resonators act as
Schematic illustration of the integrated near-field optoelectronic (INFO) probe showing light emission, microwave reflection lines for measuring specimen conductivity and/or magnetization, and simultaneous contact topography feedback.  

Integrated Near-field Optoelectronic (INFO) Scanning Probe

Ongoing
In a collaboration between the Nanoelectromagnetics Project and the Quantitative Imaging Project, we have fabricated and tested a GaN nanowire mounted on an AFM tip as a near-field scanning microwave microscopy (NSMM ) tip (see Fig. 2(a) below ). A tungsten atomic layer deposition (ALD) coating
epilayer

Integrated Photonics

Ongoing
The Integrated Photonics Project utilizes heterogeneous materials integration to demonstrate novel optoelectronic devices such as semiconductor lasers, wavelength converters, and polarization rotators with compact form. We use materials including silicon, silicon dioxide, tantalum pentoxide, and

Ion Traps

Ongoing
Trapped ions are sensitive to electric-field noise from trap-electrode surfaces. This noise has been an obstacle to progress in trapped-ion quantum information processing (QIP) experiments for more than a decade. It causes motional heating of the ions, and thus quantum-state decoherence. This
A chart showing the various sectors served by the Laser Power & Energy Meter calibrations project as of 2025

Laser Power and Energy Meter Calibrations

Ongoing
We serve Industry, DoD, and research institutions by calibrating instruments used to measure the power or energy emitted by a laser, or single photon source. From Single Photons to Kilowatts, Longwave Infrared to Deep Ultraviolet, Free-space and Fiber, we can calibrate your instruments. The chart to

Magnetic Random Access Memory

Ongoing
Focus areas include (1) the fundamental understanding of the interactions between spin and magnetic materials and materials with large spin-orbit scattering; (2) the nonlinear dynamics of both individual and interacting nanoscale magnetic systems; and (3) the role of thermal noise in nanomagnetic