Expanding the Technology Horizon

Research and development at the technological frontier has yielded a bounty of new ideas, new products, and new capabilities—the sources of economic and productivity growth. The seeds of future growth—the next generations of breakthrough, market-shaping technologies—will come from forward-looking, long-term investments in R&D.

• NIST encourages and advances U.S. industry’s efforts to explore and cultivate opportunities on the technology horizon. Prospective dividends could be realized in fields ranging from drug discovery to health care and from nanotechnology to auto manufacturing. For example:

• In the early 1990s, CuraGen Corp., a New Haven, Conn., firm with 17 employees, successfully competed for matching funds from NIST’s Advanced Technology Program (ATP), then one of the only sources of substantial support for gene-expression research. Since then, the company has developed novel technologies for unraveling the role of proteins in disease. Three automated processes are in the commercialization stage. Curagen, which now employs 300 people, estimates that its technologies can save the nation more than $1 billion by reducing the time and cost required to identify promising drug compounds.

• The outcome of an ATP-enabled collaboration between Lamb Technicon Machining Systems and the University of Michigan has the potential to eliminate a major obstacle to fully flexible, automated machining lines in automobile manufacturing. To be introduced this fall, a new laser-guided line-boring machine with intelligent control will vie to replace machines now used to drill and align high-precision holes during the manufacture of auto engines. If the new, flexible technology performs up to expectations, annual industry-wide savings could exceed $700 million.

• NIST researchers were the first to observe a new form of matter—a Fermi degenerate gas. Among the year’s top achievements in physics, the accomplishment may lead to applications in the fields of superconductivity, timekeeping, and others.

Atomically Correct Measures

Worldwide, the nanotechnology rush is on. NIST is providing tools and research support essential to probing, manipulating, and, ultimately, mastering this once “submicroscopic” realm. In 1999, for example, NIST researchers:

• Built a highly directional atom laser made from a Bose-Einstein condensate, an exotic form of matter first realized by NIST and University of Colorado scientists a few years earlier. Areas of future application include semiconductor manufacturing, holography, and navigation.

• Developed the means to manipulate, count, and store electrons one at a time. The pioneering electron counter will enable extremely accurate measurements of stored electrical energy, or capacitance, which is vital to makers and users of electronics products and control instruments.

• Demonstrated the potential of three experimental methods for measuring the widths of the gates and interconnecting wires on integrated circuits with atomic-level accuracy, necessary for future generations of chips. Continuing its collaboration with the International SEMATECH consortium, NIST now will evaluate the techniques on more complicated, production-type samples.

• Dramatically improved the capability and sensitivity of secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), a widely used technique for chemical analysis of semiconductor and organic surfaces and thin films. Enhancements should improve the ability to determine the distribution and concentration of dopants in advanced semiconductor devices, a pressing industry need. In studies of model organic systems, signal intensities increased by as much as a factor of 100,000, extending the range of substances that can be analyzed with SIMS. Examples are brain and plant tissue, DNA probes, organic polymers, and drug compounds. Called cluster SIMS, the NIST approach meticulously maps the surface and in-depth chemical composition of surfaces, molecular layer by molecular layer.

Infrastructure for e-Commerce

Fast, reliable, and secure networks that link people, organizations, information, and technology underpin modern economies and societies. With a variety of partners, NIST attends to the integrity and advancement of the nation’s information infrastructure. In 1999, NIST:

• Completed a critical milestone in the development of the Advanced Encryption Standard—a security tool fundamental to the growth of electronic commerce. NIST narrowed the international field of AES competitors to five, down from 15. The finalists are undergoing the next round of rigorous evaluation before one is chosen as the standard algorithm for encrypting and decrypting sensitive government information. Widespread private-sector use of the AES is anticipated.

• Launched a major new initiative to establish security standards and test methods for smart cards, focusing initially on the financial services industry. Partner companies account for nearly 100 percent of the financial card market. The project is being carried out under the auspices of the National Information Assurance Partnership, an activity of NIST and the National Security Agency.

• As a neutral technical expert, facilitated industrial collaborations to develop open standards for biometric devices and electronic books, helping to accelerate availability of products using the new technologies.

• Helped tens of thousands of small businesses squash the Y2K bug, through training programs, 24-hour hot lines, and other measures. By the end of 1999, NIST’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership, MEP affiliates, and partnering organizations distributed nearly 340,000 software kits developed to help companies “trouble-shoot” their information systems and to devise corrective responses.

• Initiated an on-line certification testing service for manufacturing software containing applications of the international Standard for the Exchange of Product model data (STEP), formally known as ISO 10303. Key to efforts to improve computer-system interoperability, STEP is akin to a universal language for exchanging design data and a wealth of other computerized information on products. The new program ensures that software complies with STEP. In 1999, Dassault/IBM and UG Solutions, major vendors of computer-aided design systems, were the first to obtain STEP
  certifications.

Toward Advanced Wireless

With the number of “wireless” subscribers projected to nearly triple by 2005, the growing wave of demand for wireless communications and networking technologies has not even begun to crest. NIST is helping U.S. industry pursue the advanced wireless technologies of tomorrow.

• More than 80 companies and other organizations now are participating in NIST’s National Wireless Electronic Systems Testbed (N-WEST), designed to speed development and use of voluntary operational standards for broadband wireless technologies. Participants in the global, open standards-development project meet every two months, facilitating rapid industry consensus on technical specifications. These will pave the way for new opportunities for two-way Internet, telephone, and video services to businesses, schools, libraries, health care providers, and, eventually, private homes.

• With risk-sharing ATP funds, Illinois Superconductor Corp. developed efficient
  methods for fabricating amplifiers, filters, and other radio-frequency equipment with high-temperature, superconducting materials, resulting in significant improvements for wireless telecommunications companies and their customers. For example, after installing ISC technology, cellular-phone base stations have realized signal-range increases of up to 25 percent, expanding coverage areas by more than 50 percent.
  

Last updated: 2/7/00
Contact: inquiries@nist.gov

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