Projects and initiatives

“NanoMag”

At the EuroNanoForum 2015 in Riga, the “NanoMag” Project – Nanometrology Stan-dardization Methods for Magnetic Nanopar-ticles” which is funded by the EU was selected as one of the Top 10 among more than 1000 EU projects in the field of “Nan-otechnologies/New Materials”. The project aims to validate and harmonize measure-ment procedures for magnetic nanoparticles. PTB’s “Biosignals” Department coordinates the two central work packages “Analysis of Magnetic Nanoparticles” and “Standardiza-tion of Magnetic Nanoparticles”.

Fair datasheet

At present, users of optical 3D surface mea-suring devices experience difficulty com-paring different measurement procedures or instruments, since a confusing amount of different terms coexist in the datasheets. This makes direct, objective comparability difficult. An initiative has now presented a “Fair Datasheet” for optical 3D surface mea-suring devices (http://optassyst.de/faires-datenblatt/ – in German). It consists of three components: the definition of characteristics, reading support and a layout sample. The initiative is supported by manufacturers of measuring instruments (Alicona, NanoFo-cus, Polytec), users (Audi, Robert Bosch, Daimler) and by the Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, with PTB, ZVEI and VDI considerably contributing to its operation. The “Fair Datasheet” considers itself as a quality label to encourage manufacturers of measuring instruments to provide prac-tice-oriented and comparable specifications.

nuClock

The “nuClock” project, which is coordinated by the TU Wien in Vienna (Austria), has been selected for support by the EU program for “Future and Emerging Technologies FET Open” and began its work on 1 June 2015. With the participation of PTB, a consortium of 7 groups in Austria, Finland and Germa-ny will promote the development of a novel clock over the next 4 years. This clock will, for the first time, be based on a transition in an atom nucleus (Th 229) and will thus ex-hibit less sensitivity to external disturbances than current atomic clocks. The concept of such a “nuclear clock” was suggested for the first time by PTB in 2003. (Project website: www.nuclock.eu. EC horizon 2020: t1p.de/horizon.