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PTB Annual Report 2020

ForewordForeword

Keep your distance, follow the rules on hygiene, wear a face mask, and air rooms regularly – with these rules that are new to us all and that all of you helped us to implement consistently at PTB, we have taken control over the SARS-CoV-2 virus at PTB! Apart from a short hard lockdown in our Berlin Institute during the early weeks of the pandemic, we were able to keep our operations going to the greatest possible extent. The infections at PTB were and are at a comparatively low level: In 2020, a total of 22 members of our staff were infected with COVID-19, and these infections occurred almost exclusively outside PTB. We were able to perform our central services and to make progress with our many ongoing research projects. This was all accomplished by introducing flexible operating modes, upgrading our room ventilation concepts, and massively expanding the ways we work from home. We also faced a steep learning curve on how to use our e-files and how to carry out videoconferences, and we found countless creative ways of resolving issues relating to the things we do every day.

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My very special thanks go to PTB’s extremely committed Crisis Management Team, as well as to all of you for your discipline, for your understanding, and your sensible and considerate behavior. In the last 12 months, we put a lot of effort into internal communication. This included updating our intranet page, letters from the Presidential Board of PTB, intense communication between the Presidential Board and the division heads, as well as setting up a dedicated corona hotline. It was possible to reach the hotline at all times, and one of the roles it took on was that of PTB’s “inhouse health authority” – it correspondingly traced the contacts in each individual case of COVID-19.

Despite – and perhaps even because of – COVID-19 and the reduced amount of traveling, we found the time to think fundamentally about the future of metrology and to set the course for the important issues of the future. There are many often “disruptive” developments in society, the economy, and not least in metrology that are no longer just situated within a single, narrowly restricted subject area or are limited to individual measurands. In the future, a large number of sensors and measuring procedures will rather be linked in autonomous vehicles, in the supply networks in the “city of the future”, and in “customized medicine”. Hundreds or even thousands of units of measuring data will be the basis for decisions that are prepared using artificial intelligence procedures. All of this means it is necessary to characterize and understand things metrologically, and it is also necessary to think holistically. With this in mind, we elaborated a proposal for an Innovation Center for Systems Metrology (IZSM) together with PTB’s Advisory Board (Kuratorium). In November 2020, this proposal was submitted to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), backed by a recommendation from the whole of the Kuratorium. This groundbreaking concept is going to help PTB tackle future metrological challenges in its role as one of the world leaders in metrology. In collaboration with PTB, the IZSM will contribute to considerably reducing the development cycles for disruptive technologies, strengthening the innovation capabilities of Germany, and increasing confidence throughout the world in innovative networked products that are “made in Germany”. More than 130 years after PTB’s predecessor, the PTR (Imperial Physical Technical Institute), was founded (a predecessor which crucially helped to make the words “made in Germany” synonymous with “quality”), PTB is taking another courageous step towards shaping the future!

Issues such as digitalization, renewable energies, “green” hydrogen, quantum technologies, medical physics, and biochemistry are going to play a crucial role in this future. We have addressed these issues with our steering groups and have pooled all the activities PTB is undertaking on these topics. With this preparatory work as a basis, we and our partners from the region launched the “Quantum Valley Lower Saxony” in record time. Together we want to realize a quantum computer within the next five years, basing our research on technology that has been developed at PTB and with funding amounting to € 25 million from the state of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation. Along with the further development of our Quantum Technology Center, we are at the forefront of such future technology!

In addition, all of our cross-sectional issues were also prominently positioned in the German government’s economic stimulus package, so that we were well prepared and able to immediately put forward detailed proposals to support this stimulus package. A substantial total of approx. € 90 million has been estimated as the amount needed to realize this stimulus package. Whether our proposals will be accepted remains to be seen. The additional funds for the above-named issues would certainly signify a great chance – not only for the further development of Germany, but also for the further development of PTB.

Just how much our ideas, our potential, and our proposals are heard, specifically in the fields of politics and the economy, is also a question of communication. This is why we sought advice on this from an external agency last year. They helped PTB to fine-tune its mission, its values and its core messages in order to identify more exactly who PTB’s key stakeholders are and to discuss possible communication measures. Apart from the Presidential Board and the heads of the organizational units, it was especially PTB’s staff, all of you, who actively took part in this process. This consisted of a large number of interviews, several in-house workshops, and two events centering on PTB’s mission which were held in both Braunschweig and Berlin. A big thanks goes to all of those who contributed to these events so much.

PTB’s mission focuses on three values in particular: precision, objectivity, and a passion for measurement. We want to continue to fill these three values with life in the coming year – and we will unfortunately still be doing this under “corona conditions” for quite some time. We will, however, also overcome these challenges together. Hopefully we will be able to put important concepts for the future into practice with funds from the economic stimulus package, and perhaps we will be able to take the first steps towards setting up the IZSM. We can expect 2021 to be an exciting year which is rich in opportunity!


Prof. Dr. Joachim Ullrich
Präsident der PTB

News of the Year 2019

News of the Year 2019News of the Year 2019

Precise measurements on nanostructures are not only the basis for a better understanding of smallest structures, but they are also a prerequisite for a better standardization and – ultimately – for the transfer of nanoscale materials and methods from research laboratories to an industrial utilization. The novel picoindenter ‘made at PTB’ uses the tip of an atomic force microscope (AFM) as an...

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For quality assurance in radiation therapy with highenergy electrons, protons or carbon ions, the beam energy has to be checked on a regular basis. Due to the lack of a suitable measuring technique, a mere constancy test has been carried out in routine clinical work to date. This test is time-consuming and requires expensive equipment.

To make these measurements easier, a PTB employee developed...

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PTB has developed a new concept for measuring temperature with the aid of electrical resistances. This method combines the advantages of the well-established resistance thermometry with noise thermometry as a primary method for measuring the thermodynamic temperature. The dual-mode auto-calibrating resistance thermometer (DART) was designed as a practical auto-referencing resistance thermometer...

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Scientists of the Berlin Institute of PTB have adapted the innovative method of droplet digital PCR to detect SARS-CoV-2 and have applied it successfully within the scope of an international comparison measurement in an external quality assurance scheme. 470 medical laboratories from 36 countries took part in this comparison. In the future, the method from PTB could therefore be used as a...

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Within the International Organization of Legal Metrology (OIML), Document D31 plays the role of a software guide. This guide is used by OIML project groups to elaborate requirement documents that are uniform throughout the world and apply to software-controlled measuring instruments. After the currently valid version of the document had been adopted in October 2019, it was decided to revise this...

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Artificial intelligence is a big trend in medicine. In particular in fields such as ECG assessment where much practice and experience are necessary, machine learning may show great advantages. The algorithms are capable of recognizing patterns in the midst of large amounts of data and can support physicians in the time-consuming procedure of checking the numerous ECG signals. For this purpose, the...

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For PTB’s International Cooperation Department, 2020 has proved to be a very special year. The whole world had to (and still has to) deal with the COVID-19 pandemic which has particularly affected PTB’s partner countries. Right now, it is of particular importance for PTB to help maintain functioning quality infrastructures to counter the economic and social consequences in those countries. The...

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The synchronization of clocks in networked computers and digital devices is a fundamental precondition for many distributed applications that require accurate time stamps. Examples of such applications include databases that are distributed across several servers, distributed sensor data in Industry 4.0, autonomous driving and high-frequency trade – the latter two being applications for which...

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PTB is a founding member of the Quantum Valley Lower Saxony (QVLS) alliance which aims to develop a quantum computer for Germany by 2025. For this purpose, the alliance has been awarded 25 million euros of funding provided by the federal state of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation. Under the umbrella of QVLS, the excellent expertise of more than 400 scientists is to be bundled together in...

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For the first time, scientists of PTB and of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) have carried out optical measurements of highly charged ions with unprecedented accuracy. For this purpose, they isolated a single Ar13+ ion from an extremely hot plasma and practically brought it to rest in an ion trap together with a laser-cooled, singly charged ion. The accuracy achieved by using...

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From Divisions (German only)

From DivisionsFrom Divisions

Mechanik und Akustik (Abteilung 1)

Elektrizität (Abteilung 2)

Chemische Physik und Explosionsschutz (Abteilung 3)

Optik (Abteilung 4)

Fertigungsmesstechnik (Abteilung 5)

Ionisierende Strahlung (Abteilung 6)

Temperatur und Synchrotronstrahlung (Abteilung 7)

Medizinphysik und metrologische Informationstechnik
(Abteilung 8)

Database

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