NIST Tech Beat - September 27, 2007

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today announced 56 new awards for innovative industrial research and development projects under the agency’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP).

The new awards represent a broad range of technologies, including medical diagnostic techniques, alternative energy sources, manufacturing, semiconductor electronics, transportation, nanotechnology, energy conservation and automated language translation, among others. The new awards potentially represent a total of up to $138.7 million in ATP funding together with an industry cost-share of up to $104 million, if all projects are carried through to completion. ATP awards are made contingent on available funding and on evidence of satisfactory progress throughout the multi-year research schedules.

The 56 projects were chosen in a competition announced last April and represent the last set of R&D projects to be funded under the ATP, which was abolished under the America COMPETES Act (P.L. 110-69). The act allows for continued support for ongoing ATP projects, including those chosen in the FY 2007 competition. The ATP provided cost-shared support to enable or accelerate high-risk industrial research projects. Projects were selected for funding by a competitive, peer-reviewed process that evaluated the scientific and technical merit of each proposal and the potential for broad-based benefits to the nation if the technology were successfully developed.

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have transferred information between two “artificial atoms” by way of electronic vibrations on a microfabricated aluminum cable, demonstrating a new component for potential ultra-powerful quantum computers of the future. The setup resembles a miniature version of a cable-television transmission line, but with some powerful added features, including superconducting circuits with zero electrical resistance, and multi-tasking data bits that obey the unusual rules of quantum physics.

The resonant cable might someday be used in quantum computers, which would rely on quantum behavior to carry out certain functions, such as code-breaking and database searches, exponentially faster than today’s most powerful computers. Moreover, the superconducting components in the NIST demonstration offer the possibility of being easier to manufacture and scale up to a practical size than many competing candidates, such as individual atoms, for storing and transporting data in quantum computers.

Unlike traditional electronic devices, which store information in the form of digital bits that each possess a value of either 0 or 1, each superconducting circuit acts as a quantum bit, or qubit, which can hold values of 0 and 1 at the same time. Qubits in this “superposition” of both values may allow many more calculations to be performed simultaneously than is possible with traditional digital bits, offering the possibility of faster and more powerful computing devices. The resonant section of cable shuttling the information between the two superconducting circuits is known to engineers as a “quantum bus,” and it could transport data between two or more qubits.

The NIST work is featured on the cover of the Sept. 27 issue of Nature*. The scientists encoded information in one qubit, transferred this information as microwave energy to the resonant section of cable for a short storage time of 10 nanoseconds, and then successfully shuttled the information to a second qubit. For more details, see Digital Cable Goes Quantum: NIST Debuts Superconducting Quantum Computing Cable.

* M.A. Sillanpää, J.I. Park and R.W. Simmonds. Coherent quantum state storage and transfer between two phase qubits via a resonant cavity. Nature, Sept. 27, 2007.

Materials researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), together with colleagues from IBM and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have pushed the measurement of thin films to the edge—literally—to produce the first data on how the edges of metallic thin films contribute to their magnetic properties. Their results may impact the design of future nanoscale electronics.

Ferromagnetic thin films of metallic materials—ranging in thickness from fractions of a nanometer to several micrometers—are layered in patterns on a substrate (such as silicon) during the manufacture of many microelectronic devices that use magnetic properties, such as computer hard drives.

While methods for measuring the magnetic properties of ferromagnetic thin films have existed for some time, there currently is no way to define those properties for the edges of the film. On a relatively large-scale device, this doesn’t matter much. However, as microelectronic components get smaller and smaller, the edge becomes a bigger and bigger fraction of the surface, eventually becoming the thin film’s dominant surface and the driver of its magnetic character. (Shrink a disk by half and the top surface area is reduced by a factor of four while the length of the edge is only halved.)

A research team from NIST, IBM and MIT recently demonstrated a spectroscopic technique for measuring the magnetic properties of the edges of nickel-iron alloy thin films patterned in an array of parallel nanowires (called “stripes”) atop a silicon disk. The researchers beamed microwaves of different frequencies over the stripes and measured the magnetic resonances that resulted. Because a thin film’s edge resonates differently from its center, the researchers were able to determine which data—and subsequently, which magnetic behaviors—were attributable to the edge.

In its first trials, the new technique has been used to measure how the magnetic properties of the thin film edge are affected by the thickness of the film and the processing conditions during the stripe patterning. Data gained from the study of stripes with widths of 250 to 1,000 nanometers will be used to predict the behavior of similar structures at the nanoscale level (100 nanometers or less).

Quantum cryptography is potentially the most secure method of sending encrypted information, but does it have a speed limit? According to a new paper* by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), technological and security issues will stall maximum transmission rates at levels comparable to that of a single broadband connection, such as a cable modem, unless researchers reduce “dead times” in the detectors that receive quantum-encrypted messages. The JQI is a research partnership that includes NIST and the University of Maryland.

In quantum cryptography, a sender, usually designated Alice, transmits single photons, or particles of light, encoding 0s and 1s to a recipient, “Bob.” The photons Bob receives and correctly measures make up the secret “key” that is used to decode a subsequent message. Because of the quantum rules, an eavesdropper, “Eve,” cannot listen in on the key transmission without being detected, but she could monitor a more traditional communication (such as a phone call) that must take place between Alice and Bob to complete their communication.

Modern telecommunications hardware easily allows Alice to transmit photons at rates much faster than any Internet connection. But at least 90 percent (and more commonly 99.9 percent) of the photons do not make it to Bob’s detectors, so that he receives only a small fraction of the photons sent by Alice. Alice can send more photons to Bob by cranking up the speed of her transmitter, but then, they’ll run into problems with the detector’s “dead time,” the period during which the detector needs to recover after it detects a photon. Commercially available single-photon detectors need about 50-100 nanoseconds to recover before they can detect another photon, much slower than the 1 nanosecond between photons in a 1-Ghz transmission.

Not only does dead time limit the transmission rate of a message, but it also raises security issues for systems that use different detectors for 0s and 1s. In that important “phone call,” Bob must report the time of each detection event. If he reports two detections occurring within the dead time of his detectors, then Eve can deduce that they could not have come from the same detector and correspond to opposite bit values.

Sure, Bob can choose not to report the second, closely spaced photon, but this further decreases the key production rate. And for the most secure type of encryption, known as a one-time pad, the key has to have as many bits of information as the message itself.

The speed limit would go up, says NIST physicist Joshua Bienfang, if researchers reduce the dead time in single-photon detectors, something that several groups are trying to do. According to Bienfang, higher speeds also would be useful for wireless cryptography between a ground station and a satellite in low-Earth orbit. Since the two only would be close enough to communicate for a small part of the day, it would be beneficial to send as much information as possible during a short time window.

* D.J. Rogers, J.C. Bienfang, A. Nakassis, H. Xu and C.W. Clark, Detector dead-time effects and paralyzability in high-speed quantum key distribution, New Journal of Physics (September 2007); available at www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/-kwd=nj-2f2/1367-2630/9/9/319.

A high-speed quantum cryptography system that allows “Alice” and “Bob” to discuss things in absolute secrecy earned a 2007 R&D 100 Award for a team of researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The R&D 100 Awards* are made annually by the editors of R&D Magazine to recognize “the 100 most technologically significant products” introduced in the past year.

The award-winning “High-Speed Fiber Quantum Key Distribution System” uses lasers to generate individual photons that are transmitted down a fiber-optic communications line. The sender, notionally “Alice,” can send an unbreakable message encryption key to the receiver, “Bob,” encoded in the polarization directions of individual photons. The rules of quantum mechanics say that the polarization of any individual photon cannot be measured or “read” without destroying the photon, so no potential eavesdropper can intercept the transmission from Alice to Bob without being detected.

Practical high-speed quantum key distribution (QKD) systems have to contend with physical realities. Photons get lost, absorbed or reflected by the transmission system, so a working system has to be able to account for the lost ones and keep Alice and Bob in sync. The installed base of fiber-optic communications equipment does not work at the best frequencies for sensitive photon detectors, but it is the installed base, so a practical system has to work with that as well. And the system should be fast enough to handle modern communications requirements, such as streaming video or lots of high-speed messages.

The NIST system relies on high-efficiency, low noise detectors that use a clever frequency conversion device to get optimum performance from both the photon detectors and the optical fiber in between. The research team has demonstrated their ability to generate and transmit secure keys at a rate of over half a million bits per second over 10 km of optical fiber—fast enough to encrypt streaming digital video using a theoretically unbreakable one-time-pad encryption in real time. The group also has transmitted secure keys at rates near 10 kilobits per second at five times that distance. See New Quantum Key System Combines Speed, Distance.

How do you conveniently measure something that not only is 14 times lighter than air but also invisible? That’s just one of the tasks National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Weights and Measures Division staff have taken on to prepare the nation for the hydrogen economy.

Under an interagency agreement signed last month, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) asked NIST to intensify efforts to develop the standards, test procedures and test methods needed to buy and sell hydrogen in the marketplace as easily as we now deal in gasoline. To plan for the effort, NIST and DOE are sponsoring a U.S. National Work Group for the Development of Hydrogen Measurement Standards meeting, October 3-4 in Gaithersburg, Md. Participants will include regulatory officials, equipment manufacturers and representatives from alternative fuel organizations and laboratories working on hydrogen refueling measurement.

NIST’s work supports President Bush’s Hydrogen Fuel Initiative that aims to reverse the nation’s growing dependence on foreign oil by developing the technology needed for commercially viable, hydrogen-powered fuel cells. Accurate measurements and performance standards are critical to U.S. development and implementation of the new technology. Virtually every stage of hydrogen production, distribution and sales requires new measurement tests and methodologies to establish confidence in the transactions.

The participants in the Gaithersburg meeting will lay a foundation to develop a comprehensive set of commercial hydrogen measurement standards that encompasses: gaseous and liquid measuring devices and related equipment codes; method of sale, marking and labeling requirements, fuel quality standards, sampling procedures, inspection procedures, equipment suitability and safety practices. Participants will work to ensure there is harmonization between related national and international standards. They will also discuss hydrogen measurement training for officials and service companies as well as consumer education of the public on hydrogen measurement.

NIST will issue a report on the meeting in November. NIST’s DOE-sponsored hydrogen standards work complements American Competitiveness Initiative support for NIST’s work on hydrogen standards over the next five years.

The terrorist threat to the global transportation system, private-sector implementation of the preparedness provisions of the 9/11 Commission recommendations and a review of standards-based security programs in the United States will be among the topics considered at two upcoming workshops at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The sixth plenary session of the American National Standards Institute Homeland Security Standards Panel (ANSI-HSSP) will be held on October 3-4, and a World Standards Cooperation (WSC) Workshop on Transit Security on October 4-5, both at the NIST facility in Gaithersburg, Md.

The meetings, open to registrants of either assembly, offer attendees the opportunity to examine current issues and challenges, discuss recent successes and forge connections for future connections for future collaborations on matters critical to global and national security.

The first day of the ANSI plenary will feature panel sessions highlighting the development of interoperability standards for homeland security, potential chemical, biological, explosive and communication threats, standards for preparedness, risk, response and recovery, as well as international and national security standard initiatives. The second day will unite plenary participants with WSC workshop attendees to discuss issues related to transit security, such as the strategic role for international standards and conformity assessment programs in the area of urban, suburban and regional commuter transportation by bus, rail and the land side of urban ferry operations.

For further details, contact Matt Deane, Director, Homeland Security Standards, ANSI, (mdeane@ansi.org, 212-642-4992).

Starting in mid-October, teams of business, education, health care and nonprofit experts will visit 14 organizations as the final review stage for the 2007 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s highest recognition for excellence. The organizations selected for site visits include two in the small business category, seven in health care, one in education, and four nonprofits. There were no organizations chosen for site visits in two categories, service and manufacturing.

The Baldrige program received 84 applications in 2007 (seven small business, four service, two manufacturing, 42 health care, 16 education and 13 nonprofit). The applicants were evaluated rigorously by an independent board of examiners in seven areas: leadership; strategic planning; customer and market focus; measurement, analysis and knowledge management; workforce focus; process management; and results. Each applicant will receive a wealth of feedback detailing their most important strengths and opportunities for improvement.

Named after Malcolm Baldrige, the 26th Secretary of Commerce, the Baldrige Award was established by Congress in 1987. The award promotes excellence in organizational performance, recognizes the achievements and results of U.S. organizations, and publicizes successful performance strategies. The award is not given for specific products or services. Since 1988, 67 organizations have received Baldrige Awards.

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Editor: Michael Baum

Date created: September 27, 2007
Date updated: September 28, 2007
Contact: inquiries@nist.gov