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Material Measurement Laboratory / Materials Science and Engineering Division

Functional Polymers Group

Projects/Programs

Displaying 1 - 14 of 14
Schematic image of automated MOF synthesis platform under construction.

Autonomous Synthesis of Metal-Organic Frameworks

Ongoing
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) show great promise for a variety of applications, from industrial gas separation, to catalysis, to PFAS absorption. One challenge to the adoption of these technologies is determining and optimizing the synthesis of these materials. There are large computational

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

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
Schematic of approach to clean water membranes

Membranes for Clean Water

Completed
Impact Access to affordable, clean water is vital to the nation's economic growth and security. Polymer-based membrane separation technologies based on reverse osmosis, forward osmosis and nanofiltration will play an increasingly critical role in the production of clean, safe water. In order to

Metrology for Nanoimprint Lithography

Completed
Nanoimprint Lithography (NIL) was originally perceived as a versatile, low-cost, and high-resolution patterning alternative for optical lithography in CMOS fabrication. However, it is becoming apparent that NIL has great potential for nanotechnology in general. It is capable of patterning sub-10 nm

Personal Body Armor

Completed
To quantify the impact of mechanical degradation on ballistic fibers, NIST developed a novel device for controlled folding of yarns and woven fabrics. In addition, we developed test protocols that employ single fibers to assess the effect of folding using a recently developed modified single fiber

Polymer Analytics

Ongoing
This project focuses on a variety of activities to achieve the aforementioned goal of accelerating the discovery of new polymer physics. Enhanced machine learning Two major hurdles to applying machine learning to polymer science is a lack of large datasets and a need to understand the model
Composite Interphase

Polymer Composites

Ongoing
Measurements of interphase properties are extremely challenging, and their effects on macroscopic properties and performance of composites are poorly quantified. The objectives of this project fall into the following four research thrusts: Fluorescence Based Probes to Sense Damage and Water in
High Impact Ballistic Testing of Polymer Films

Polymer Mechanics

Ongoing
The mechanical behavior for polymers is very sensitive to the deformation rate of the impact test. Thus we are developing and applying several novel measurements that can study the mechanical response of the polymer at different deformation rates and at different material length scales. High-rate
Schematic of selective transport of water, ions, or molecules across a polymer membrane.

Polymer Membranes

Ongoing
We are developing and applying the following advanced tools to measure the structure, dynamics, and performance of polymer-based membranes and sorbents: Vibrational Spectroscopy We have developed a custom-built tandem quartz crystal microbalance (QCM), which measures total mass uptake of adsorbed

Polymers for Next-Generation Lithography

Completed
We work closely with the semiconductor industry to develop and apply measurements with high-spatial and chemically-specific resolution to elucidate the critical materials properties and process kinetics at nanometer scales that are needed to advance next-generation photolithography, including both

Templated Assembly of Block Copolymer Films

Completed
Viable nanomanufacturing of templated block copolymers will require a capability to control orientation and line edge roughness of trillions of structures to within a single nanometer, however there are no existing platforms that meet this need. We are developing small angle x-ray and neutron

WebFF: Force-field repository for organic and soft materials

Ongoing
WebFF is an open and extensible force-field (FF) repository, designed to support the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) for organic and related soft materials. The repository is built using the NIST Materials Data Curation System (MDCS) which supports ontology based database descriptions using XML
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