News Archive 2013

Thermoelectric materials convert thermal energy directly into electric energy, and vice versa. The effectiveness of the energy conversion depends on the transport properties of the materials, on the Seebeck coefficient S, on the electric conductivity σ and on the thermal conductivity κ, which are summarized in the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT = S²σT/κ (T: absolute temperature). The ...

The 273rd PTB Seminar "VUV and EUV Metrology" was held in the Lecture Hall of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin at the electron storage ring BESSY II in Berlin-Adlershof on 24 and 25 October 2013. More than 110 participants from industry and research made use of these two days to discuss current developments with regard to the application, instrumentation and measuring techniques of ...

European enterprises are world leaders in developing EUV lithography (EUVL). Starting approximately in 2016, it should be possible to use EUVL at a wavelength of 13.5 nm to manufacture semiconductor chips. PTB has supported this development since 1998 by providing the EUV measuring technology – originally at its laboratory at the electron storage ring BESSY I and since 2000 at BESSY II in order to...

Quantitative spectroscopic measurements in the infrared spectral range are essential for the exact determination of the density distribution of trace gases and of temperature curves in the Earth's atmosphere. The traceability of such radiometric measurements to the International Temperature Scale via Planck's radiation law is an indispensible basis to achieve the smallest measurement uncertainties...

First performed at 2.52 THz only, PTB has now extended its unique detector-based radiometric calibration service to the full tuning range of a Terahertz laser spanning from 1 THz to 5 THz. As published in Optics Express, the standard measurement uncertainty of the THz power scale is reduced simultaneously to below 2 % by a new way to link the scale to the International System of Units (SI).

In the past years, PTB calibrated a series of telescope systems for solar observation and atmospheric research using synchrotron radiation in the UV and the VUV spectral ranges. Hereby, either individual components or the full systems were characterized by means of specially developed transfer radiation sources. Within the scope of a research cooperation which has recently been concluded with the ...

At PTB’s electron storage ring Metrology Light Source (MLS), a scattering type near-field microscope for the infrared (IR) regime has been successfully put into operation in cooperation with the Freie Universität Berlin (group of Prof. E. Rühl). The near-field micros is based on the principle of a scanning force microscope and enables the acquisition of the specimen’s infrared signature...