News from division 7

The semiconductor industry needs metrology systems to characterize the dimensions of transistor structures in the nanometer range in a fast, non-destructive, and metrologically reliable manner. A major challenge here is the limitation of the resolution of the measurement systems by the wavelength of the radiation used. Therefore, the use of short-wavelength extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation is...

The article "Calibration of the dual-mode auto-calibrating resistance thermometer with few-parts-per-million uncertainty" published in Measurement Science and Technology was awarded by IOP publishing with the "Outstanding Paper Award 2022" in the field of precision measurement. The paper by Dietmar Drung, Marco Kraus and Christian Krause describes the calibration method of PTB’s novel noise...

At the 'Process-near X-ray Analysis (PRORA) 2022' symposium, Karina Bzheumikhova, PhD student in the working group 7.24 X-ray spectrometry, was awarded the poster prize for the presentation of her work 'X-ray spectroscopy investigation of LiNi_xCo_yMn_1-x-yO₂ cathode materials: the final step to understanding pristine NMC cathode materials'.

At the international textile conference ADDITC 2022 held in Aachen in early December, the contribution "Thickness Gauging of Polymer Coatings on Knit Fabrics Using Fast Terahertz TDS" on the thickness measurements of polymer coatings on knitted fabrics by means of terahertz time-domain spectroscopy (TDS) was given the "Best Poster Award 2022".

At the ‘European X-Ray Spectrometry’ (EXRS) conference 2022, Katja Frenzel, graduate student in the X-ray Spectrometry Group 7.24, received the ‘Poster Session Award’ for the presentation of her thesis „Quantitative characterization of elemental mass depositions in pancreatic carcinoma sections of mice by reference-free X-ray fluorescence analysis”.

Orbitale zeigen ähnlich wie ein Foto in Langzeitbelichtung, wo sich Elektronen in einem Atom oder Molekül bevorzugt aufhalten. In Lehrbüchern werden sie oft als bunte Ballons dargestellt. Nach ihrer räumlichen Orientierung werden Molekülorbitale als Pi- oder Sigma-Typ bezeichnet.

A joint research proposal between the SENTECH Instruments GmbH, the Technische Universität Berlin, the Helmholtz-Zentrum für Materialien und Energie Berlin GmbH and the PTB has been approved for the ProFIT program of the Investitionsbank Berlin IBB (program for boost of research, innovation and technology). 

Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) is ideally suited for the traceable determination of the size or size distribution of nanoparticles. At PTB, monochromatized X-rays from the four-crystal monochromator beamline in the PTB laboratory at BESSY II are used for this purpose...

The authors Rolf Judaschke, Mathias Kehrt, Karsten Kuhlmann and Andreas Steiger receive the "Andy Chi Best Paper Award" for publishing the results of their two-year collaboration "Linking the Power Scales of Free-Space and Waveguide-Based Electromagnetic Waves". This prestigious award recognizes the best paper published in the "IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement" in the past year...

The far-infrared spectroscopy in the so-called terahertz (THz) spectral range (wavenumbers from 40 cm^-1 to 400 cm^-1) allows for the non-invasive probing of biomolecular interactions due to the detection of vibrational spectroscopic fingerprints...

Important milestones have been reached in the development of PTB's new noise thermometer, the Dual-mode Auto-calibrating Resistance Thermometer (DART). The patent, applied for in October 2020, was recently granted and will be published in a few months. After extensive investigation and optimization of the basic DART...

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has arrived in January 2022 in its orbit foreseen around the Lagrange point L₂, 1.5 million kilometres from Earth. The four scientific instruments of the JWST will now undergo final calibration in space before the first scientific results can be expected starting from summer 2022. For the NIRSpec (Near Infrared Spectrograph) instrument contributed by the...

The introduction of EUV lithography in semiconductor industry has significantly expanded the technologically relevant spectral range of electromagnetic radiation to include extreme UV radiation (EUV)...

Within the European series of research projects labelled "Metrology for Earth Observation and Climate" (MetEOC3-4), a new reference blackbody, the so-called "Hemispherical Blackbody" (HSBB), was developed at PTB in cooperation with the Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos / World Radiation Center (PMOD/WRC)...

Seit über 10 Jahren arbeiten die PTB und das Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) Hand in Hand zusammen auf dem Gebiet der Röntgenkleinwinkelstreuung (Small Angle X-ray Scattering, SAXS)...