NIST Opens Highly Controllable Lab Space

“Precise measurements are among the most profound innovations in the entire history of science,” John Marburger, the president’s science adviser, said at the 21 June dedication ceremony of NIST’s new Advanced Measurement Laboratory in Gaithersburg, Maryland. “The facility … is an important part of the technical means the US government must deploy to maintain its leadership in the world’s economy,” said Marburger.

NIST hopes to encourage the development of high-tech products by opening the nearly 50 000-square-meter laboratory not only to its researchers but to hundreds of visitors from academia and industry. More than 100 research projects, from measuring the strength of a chemical bond between an antibody and a virus to studying the properties of Bose–Einstein condensates at temperatures near absolute zero are already moving into the building. “The main emphasis will be on research at the atomic scale,” says NIST spokesperson Michael Baum.

The $235 million laboratory (above) was designed to minimize fluctuations in electrical currents, noise vibrations, and other environmental factors. The lab features 338 reconfigurable laboratory modules and an 8520-square-meter nanofabrication facility, which will become operational next year.

The building has more than 100 air-handling units and 200 exhaust fans (see inset). In the nanofabrication facility, the air is filtered about 300 times an hour to reduce particulate matter from the already high clean-room standards elsewhere in the lab down to 3. 5 particles per liter of air. Throughout most of the lab, the temperature can be controlled to within 0. 25°C, with 48 laboratories tunable to ±0. 01°C.