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 / Nanoscale Device Characterization Division

Nanoscale Spectroscopy Group

Projects/Programs

Displaying 1 - 17 of 17
eight boxes with different graphs

Accurate Mapping of Thermal Properties at the Nanoscale

Ongoing
Continuous advances in the performance and functionality of semiconductor devices have been driven by scale reduction, incorporation of new and nanomaterials, and by heterogeneous integration (HI). However, such scaling and integrated architecture has rendered existing thermal metrology inadequate
Schematic of interface engineering 2D materials.

Chemical Functionalization and Manipulation of Nano Materials

Completed
This project focuses on manipulating nanomaterials, including weakly bonded van der Waals systems, and probing emergent phenomena in these nanoengineered systems to impact technologies such as nanoelectronics, optoelectronics, quantum sensing, and quantum computing. Developing processes to
Nitrogen-vacancy center in a diamond crystal

Diamond NV Center Magnetometry

Completed
A flaw in a crystal might not be an intuitive choice for a measurement tool, but the nitrogen-vacancy (NV-) defect in diamond is something special. Using light, we prepare the NV- center’s the quantum spin state, it interacts with magnetic fields, and we read out the resulting spin state through
Electron micrographs of representative as-synthesized MNPs for thermometry.

Engineering and Optical Characterization of Magnetic Nanoparticles (MNPs)

Completed
Nanomagnets by Design Nanoparticles are an important subclass of low-dimensional magnetic materials displaying size-dependent magnetic behavior. The controllable magnetocrystalline anisotropy introduced at nanoscale size regimes (as low as 3 nms in diameter) allows for MNPs of ferro/ferrimagnetic
Organic light emitting diode, light output is modulated through magnetic control of exciton states

Exciton and Charge Transport Dynamics in Organic Semiconductors

Ongoing
Our approach toward establishing connections between the application space and physical phenomena includes developing electrical/optical devices and measurements that can be used for physical measurement, physical measurements that can be applied to real devices, and device design that can be tuned
tripeptides

Far-infrared Spectroscopy of Biomolecules (Archived)

Completed
We employ novel complimentary measurement and theoretical techniques to explore the low frequency intramolecular dynamics of model biological molecules including amino acids, short peptides with constrained structures, proteins with well-defined tertiary structures and DNAs. Our current efforts
Diagram showing our multidimensional spectroscopy experiment.

Femtosecond Nonlinear Optical Spectroscopy of Nanoscale Materials

Ongoing
The purpose of this project is to develop and refine spectroscopic techniques based on nonlinear optics for the study of novel materials. Measurements that isolate the nonlinear response are often better able to uncover physical processes that, in the linear response, are subtle and hard to isolate
trirspectra

Hydrogen Generation in Di-Iron Hydrogenase Mimics (Archived)

Completed
Time-resolved infrared (TRIR) measurements on the picosecond to microsecond timescales and FTIR transmission spectroscopy in the far-infrared (THz) spectral region are applied as a means to monitor light-initiated vibrational mode dynamics in model hydrogenase species. Synthesis of the model species
Spectroscopic ellipsometry measurement of a 2D monolayer and the optical property for such a thin layer.

Optical and Optoelectronic Materials Characterization

Ongoing
Today's electronics have reached a point where sheer computation power has combined form and function as the key driver of large consumer markets. The demand for portable and pervasive electronics with greater functionality promises significant changes over the next decades in how society interacts
Measurements of transition probability vs. pulse length and detuning

Sequential Bayesian Experiment Design

Completed
We develop and publish the optbayesexpt python package. The package implements sequential Bayesian experiment design to control laboratory experiments for efficient measurements. The package is designed for measurements with: an experiment (possibly computational) that yields measurements and
David Gundlach

Thin Film Electronics (Archived)

Completed
Today's electronics have reached a point where sheer computation power has yielded to combined form and function as the key driver of large consumer markets. The demand for portable and pervasive electronics with greater functionality promises significant changes over the next decades in how society
Sample in cryostat.

Ultrafast Spectroscopy to Advance Microelectronics

Ongoing
Continued advancement in microelectronics, including analog and digital electronics, power electronics, optics and photonics, and micromechanics for memory, processing, sensing, and communications as defined by the OSTP “National Strategy on Microelectronics Research,” requires knowledge of material