Papers

AVS2001 Session NB-SuA: NBS/NIST Centennial

Sunday, October 28, 2001 5:00 PM in Room 120

Sunday Afternoon

Start	Invited?	Item
5:00 PM		NB-SuA-7 Vacuum Measurements at NBS/NIST B.R.F. Kendall (Elvac Laboratories) Almost from its inception, NBS (National Bureau of Standards) began improving the existing techniques for producing and measuring high vacuum. By the 1920s and 1930s this expertise was being put to use in several state-of-the-art electron and ion beam devices, especially in early mass spectrometers where minimum beam scattering was essential. This began the long series of refinements of vacuum gauges and their associated operating procedures, ranging from the relatively mundane McLeod gauges of the early era to the spinning rotor gauges, residual gas analyzers and advanced laser photoionization detectors of today. Important advances were also made in the design and calibration of standard leaks, flowmeters and related equipment. A number of valuable workshops were organized to bring together researchers in many of these areas, and also to introduce users to advanced devices such as the spinning rotor gauge. As the organization evolved into the present-day NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), support was also given to outside researchers working on fundamental pressure-dependent phenomena such as molecular collisions and electron lifetimes. At the same time, NBS/NIST has also become involved in areas of vacuum technology far removed from those conventionally covered by the AVS, such as precision altimetry and the problems of introducing vacuum at the milliTorr level to the refrigeration industry. Valuable contributions continue to be made in the areas of calibration, elimination of sources of error in vacuum measurements, and the development of new vacuum standards.
5:40 PM		NB-SuA-9 Highlights of Surface Science at NBS/NIST: Accomplishments and Impacts T.E. Madey (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey) This will be a selected summary of important accomplishments and "firsts" at NBS/NIST through the years in many areas of surface science: instrument development, original experiments, standards development, and theory. Seminal developments and achievements with lasting impacts will be emphasized (including, but not limited to, experiment and theory of field emission tunnel resonances, the topografiner as a predecessor of STM, high-performance electron-energy analyzers, spin-polarized electron detection and SEMPA, novel miniature gas sensors, improved devices based on the giant magnetoresistance effect, ESDIAD, catalysis over single crystals, laser-induced desorption, surface vibrational lifetimes, molecular modeling of time-dependent phenomena at surfaces, inelastic neutron scattering from adsorbates, calculation of electron inelastic mean free paths, development of databases and reference materials).