The Virtuous Cycle of Making and Measuring Nanostructures

A NIST physicist sees big benefits in the interaction between the different types of work.

View as a Web Page Taking Measure Blog The Virtuous Cycle of Making and Measuring Nanostructures By Samuel Stavis, a physical scientist and group leader at NIST In his 1959 lecture "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," Richard Feynman invited us to enter a new field of physics. He envisioned, with remarkable prescience, making, measuring and using new technology at the nanometer scale. The exact effect that his predictions had on future science is uncertain, but he certainly inspired science fiction writers, and their stories captured my imagination as an undergraduate student. Was it possible to create machines so small and put them to work? I wanted to learn more and would soon have the opportunity, starting graduate school in the early years of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. After my coursework, I got to choose between the clean room or the machine shop to get going in the laboratory. I chose the clean room and put on a bunny suit, expecting to step into the machine shop of the future. Instead, I entered the lithography bay of a submicron facility from the late years of the disco era. Read More

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