Award Data

Using a novel concept for humidity control, based on a proprietary saturated air source, MAC will construct and evaluate a prototype of an environmental chamber for use with NIST’s SPHERE UV source, in weathering or other UV degradation studies. The chamber will interface to the exit ports of the SPHERE, maintaining the material coupons, mounted in a standardized sample holder, at a programmed t ...

X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy is a widely used and extremely sensitive analytical technique for qualitative as well as quantitative chemical analysis. Superconducting Transition Edge Sensor (TES) microcalorimeter detectors have now been developed that achieve an energy resolution of 2 eV (full width at half maximum) for 1.5 keV X-rays, which is sufficient to enable the measurement of the small s ...

With the growing demand for more efficient fingerprinting techniques, live scans are rapidly displacing traditional ink-based methods. Despite improvements in detector and processing technology for capturing and digitizing fingerprints, current equipment falls well short of NIST’s goal of a small, tamper-resistant, battery-powered, handheld scanner. Incumbent equipment suppliers have little comm ...

We propose to demonstrate near infrared (NIR) InGaAs sensor arrays with 55% lower noise than arrays presently available to improve the sensitivity of current spectroscopy systems. The low noise performance will be enabled by the use of low-noise source follower per detector ROICs, which are also used in astronomy with HgCdTe for low noise measurements. With design improvements to current available ...

A high sensitivity laser-induced incandescence system is proposed for the detailed characterization of environmental soot. The Phase 1 effort has clearly demonstrated the feasibility of (1) reducing the lower detection limit of soot volume fraction and increasing the overall measurement range by at least 2 orders of magnitude from what is currently achievable, and (2) providing PM particle size me ...

NIST is seeking a large area solar simulator to overcome the shortcomings of current solar simulators. To meet this need, Physical Optics Corp. (POC) proposed to develop a new Holographic Light-Emitting-Diode-Based Solar Simulator (HOLIOS) based on holographic gratings, holographic diffuser, high-power light emitting diodes with electronic drivers, collimating and projection optics, and photodetec ...

The objective of this proposal is to create a prototype imaging variable kinetic energy electron analyzer in the range 0.1 to 8 keV for use with an X-ray excitation source. The imaging analyzer is to have a target imaging spatial resolution of 100 nm. The X-ray excitation source will be a synchrotron light source. The instrument can be described as an X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) microsc ...

Session Control technology, which tracks, controls, and directs all media sessions. Beyond Access proposes to provide feasibility into not only the core Session Control technology, but also an enabling software platform to connect, discover, and manage complex many-to-many multi-modal interaction sessions.

This project is to assess the feasibility of an instrument to provide energy-filtered electron images of a specimen at least 10mm by 10mm in size, operating over a 50-900eV energy range and suitable for NEXAFS chemical imaging. The applicant proposes to demonstrate feasibility by delivering a suitable electron-optical design along with calculated performance characteristics. Knowledge of the exist ...

Group III-nitrides with their wide bandgap properties are one of most promising materials not only in opto-electronics but also in high power and high temperature electronics. A critical issue in device applications of the nitride materials is the metal ohmic contact, which seriously limits the performance and efficiency of nitride-based devices. Finding suitable low-resistance Ohmic contacts for ...