Skip to main content
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.

Projects/Programs

Displaying 1 - 25 of 172

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 Microscopy for Trace and Bulk Particle Characterization

Ongoing
The goal of this project is to help develop innovative metrologies and measurement protocols for micro/nano-scale analysis of particles. In this project, state-of-the-art optical and electron-based microscopy are used to conduct research for quantitative and qualitative analysis of chemical

Applications of Quantum Information

Ongoing
Human-scale physical phenomenon represent the emergent, complex behavior of simple, microscopic laws. In the past twenty years, improved understanding of these microscopic laws have suggested that typical large-scale systems — those used in modern day technology from transistors to mechanical

Applied: Methods in Neutron Detection and Spectroscopy

Completed
Energetic neutrons (> 1 MeV) play a variety of important roles from dosimetry to the fundamental sciences. Fast neutrons can be an often under-appreciated but significant biological dose from accelerators and nuclear facilities, serve as a way of detecting nuclear materials, and can often yield

Applied: Wide-Angle Neutron Polarization Analysis

Completed
We have developed a polarizer-analyzer-spin flipper system based solely on 3He spin filters on the Multi-Axis Crystal Spectrometer (MACS) at the NIST Center for Neutron Research. The compact system is housed by a 36 cm diameter, vertical solenoid. Neutrons are polarized by transmission through a

Atomic Spectroscopy Data Center

Ongoing
The Atomic Spectroscopic Data Center at NIST provides the most comprehensive collection of atomic spectroscopy data in the world. We monitor scientific literature and maintain bibliographic databases of all papers containing spectroscopic data. By evaluating and compiling data on energy levels

Atomic Thermometers

Ongoing
Approach 1 Compact Blackbody Radiation Atomic Sensor (CoBRAS) The Compact Blackbody Radiation Atomic Sensor (CoBRAS) uses a thermal vapor of atoms excited by a single laser to detect BBR. From the optically excited state, atomic population is transferred to other, nearby excited states by a

Atomic Wavefunctions

Ongoing
The numerical solution of the multi-particle Schrodinger equation describing atomic systems remains a challenging for computational physics. ITL scientists are in the forefront of this field with respect to extremely high-accuracy computation of non-relativistic eigenstates of few electron systems.

Basic Metrology: Applications of Diagnostic X-ray Spectrometers

Ongoing
These have been fielded to help characterize the performance and x-ray spectra from advanced medical x-ray sources, laser-produced plasmas, terawatt pulsed accelerators, electron cyclotron resonance ion sources, electron-beam ion traps, intense ultrafast laser sources, and inverse-Compton

Basic Metrology (Archive): Fit-for-purpose liquid scintillators

Completed
It is now common to use surfactants to entrain aqueous metal salts in organic scintillators. This is crucial for radioactivity measurements because most radionuclides of interest are metals. More, non-metal radionuclides encountered in the environment or in medicine are nearly always in aqueous form

Basic Metrology (Archive): Primary Radioactivity Standardization of Ni-63

Completed
Generally, 63Ni has great utility as a low-energy β - calibration standard because of the favorable combination of long half-life (T = 100 a) and β - endpoint energy. Primary standardizations of 63Ni have been actively pursued by national radionuclidic metrology laboratories for over 40 years. As a

Basic Metrology (Archive): Radon Binding to Water-Soluble Cryptophane

Completed
In collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania, a 222Rn emanation sources, similar to the NIST 222Rn emanation standard (SRM 4968, NIST, 1996) was found to have a unique and novel application in a radon-in-water generator for the determination of the binding affinity of radon to a cryptophane

Basic Metrology: Gas Counting

Ongoing
Gas-filled detectors operate by measuring electrical current produced by radioactive particles interacting with an inert counting gas inside a volume. Depending on the applied voltage in the detector, different multiplication factors are achieved, which are used by specialized instruments such as

Basic Metrology: High-Dose Dosimetry Uncertainty Tables

Ongoing
Gammacell™ Calibration Geometry Dose Rate Uncertainty Source Type A (%) Type B (%) Water Calorimetry in Vertical Beam 0.16 0.51 Gammacell/Pool Source Ratio Data 0.10 Pool/B036 Source Ratio Data 0.17 Geometry Correction Factor 0.11 Field Uniformity 0.01 Source Timer (irrad time > 8min) 0.20 Co-60