News of the Year

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...