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Projects/Programs

Displaying 1 - 15 of 15

Earth Energy Budget

Ongoing
The Earth Energy Balance is a fundamental climate measurement that has 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 compact method for

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

Fiber Sources and Applications Background Information

Ongoing
NIST has been a world leader in lasers since the technology's development in the early 1960s, a tradition continued when NIST scientist John L. Hall shared the 2005 Nobel Prize in physics for his part in the invention of the optical frequency comb. The output of a comb is a brief broadband pulse

Fiber-optic Frequency Comb Development

Ongoing
Frequency combs have found a wide range of applications beyond just optical metrology. Applications include laser ranging, precision molecular spectroscopy in the lab and over the air, optical timing distribution, low-noise microwave generation and support for optical clocks. All these applications

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

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-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

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

Nanostructure Fabrication and Metrology

Completed
This project develops semiconductor nanostructures, especially self-assembled quantum dots and photonic crystals, for a variety of applications including single photonics, laser diodes, and quantum optical metrology. It also develops quantum optical metrology based on other sources and detectors

Photonic Radiometry

Ongoing
Meeting the needs of the photonics industry and anticipating emerging technologies requires investigation and development of improved measurement methods and instrumentation. This project develops state-of-art, absolute microfabricated thermal detectors with absorber coatings consisting of carbon

Quantum Radiometry

Ongoing
For quantum applications, it is important to generate quantum states of light and detect them with extremely high efficiency. This project explores the metrology challenges associated with precision measurement of single photon sources and detectors. The classical photonic radiometry techniques used

Single Photonics and Quantum Information

Ongoing
One of the activities in this group is the development of single photon technologies for quantum information science and technology. We work closely with the Nanostructure Fabrication and Metrology Project on the generation of novel non-classical states of light and the detection of single photons

Super-Continuum Laser Solar Simulator

Completed
The design of the super-continuum solar simulator is shown below. Light is produced from 450 nm to 2400 nm in sub-nanosecond pulses at a repetition rate of 80 MHz. The total irradiance is sufficient to illuminate a 1 cm 2 cell at more than 1-sun. Initial tests have confirmed that solar cells respond

Terahertz Imaging and Sources

Ongoing
Over the past several years, we have focused on bolometric detection of THz radiation. Our initial work on cryogenic detectors has been extended to antenna-coupled bolometers operating at room temperature. These detectors provide a rugged, low-cost alternative for homeland security applications; e.g

Waveform Metrology Project

Ongoing
Optical measurement techniques: NIST uses the electro-optic sampling (EOS) technique to measure the vector response of photodiodes and provide phase traceability for commercial instrumentation, such as large-signal network analyzers, lightwave component analyzers, vector signal analyzers