Nanomechanics

News and Updates

Quantum Thermometer or Optical Refrigerator?

June 22, 2017

In an arranged marriage of optics and mechanics, physicists have created microscopic structural beams that have a variety of powerful uses when light strikes

schematic of laser light interacting with a plasmonic gap resonator

NIST Device for Detecting Subatomic-Scale Motion Has Potential Robotics, Homeland Security Applications

December 15, 2016

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new device that measures the motion of super-tiny particles traversing

NIST Unveils Forensic Technique to Measure Mechanical Properties of Evidence

November 1, 2016

You may have seen it on CSI: The star examines hair from a crime scene and concludes its color or texture looks like the defendant’s hair, or maybe his dog’s

Projects and Programs

Designing the Nanoworld: Nanostructure, Nanodevices, and Nano-optics

Ongoing

Developing and exploiting nanodevices for quantum and nanotechnologies requires nanoscale and atomic scale modeling of ultrasmall structures, devices, their operation, and their response to probes. Key challenges of understanding physics at the quantum/classical interface and measurement at the

Video microscopic image - Rotation and translation.

Control of Magnetic Nanoparticles for Nanoscale Manipulation of Fluids and Materials (Archived)

Completed

Low Reynolds number swimming, or motion through a viscous fluid, is a technique at which nature is adept. Bacteria, protists, and algal cells live in a regime where viscous effects dominate inertial ones. As these microscale biological swimmers move, they perturb the fluid around them, affecting

The SPMforAMP project develops novel SPM methods

Scanning Probe Microscopy for Advanced Materials and Processes

Ongoing

With a nanometer-sharp probe capable of delicate interaction with a limitless array of materials, SPM methods such as Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) can aid in characterizing a wide range of materials in diverse environments from vacuum to biological serums. The atomic force microscope is operated in

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

Publications

Integrated photonic optomechanical atomic force microscopy probes batch fabricated using deep UV photolithography

June 3, 2023

Author(s)

Diego Perez Morelo, Mingkang Wang, Venkatesh Madhaven, Mogana Sathisivan, Charlie Tay, Vladimir Aksyuk

Chip-scale planar nanofabricated optomechanical devices that optically couple a mechanical moving nanostructure to an on-chip photonic cavity of high quality

Nonlinear Sideband Cooling to a Cat State of Motion

May 25, 2023

Author(s)

Bradley Hauer, Joshua Combes, John Teufel

The ability to prepare a macroscopic mechanical resonator into a quantum superposition state is an outstanding goal of cavity optomechanics. Here, we propose a

Beating thermal noise in a dynamic signal measurement by a nanofabricated cavity-optomechanical sensor

March 15, 2023

Author(s)

Mingkang Wang, Diego Perez Morelo, Georg Ramer, Georges Pavlidis, Jeffrey Schwartz, Liya Yu, Robert Ilic, Andrea Centrone, Vladimir Aksyuk

Thermal fluctuations often impose both fundamental and practical measurement limits on high-performance sensors, motivating the development of techniques that

Certification of Standard Reference Material® 3461 Reference Cantilevers for AFM Spring Constant Calibration

August 15, 2022

Author(s)

Richard S. Gates, William Alexander Osborn, Mark McLean, Gordon A. Shaw, James J. Filliben

A batch of 94 silicon chips containing arrays of uniform rectangular cantilevers were microfabricated from a single silicon wafer and their stiffnesses and