National Institute opens "world's most stringently engineered laboratory"

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) formally opened its new $235-million advanced measurement laboratory in Gaithersburg, Md. this summer—"One of the most significant milestones in the nearly 100-year history" of the Institute, according to an official statement.

The half-million-square-foot facility is said to be the world's most stringently engineered laboratory, meant to facilitate environment stability for various research and service endeavors, including nanotechnology and coordinate measurement machine (CMM) gauge calibration for equipment used throughout manufacturing, both of which require exacting infinitesimal control ranges.

The facility has five separate wings—including two buried completely underground—with strict air quality, temperature, vibration, and humidity control. In total, the new facility features 338 reconfigurable laboratory modules, most with the ability to control temperature within 0.25 degrees Celsius, and some to within 0.01 degrees Celsius. This will enable NIST to push to the atomic level the accuracy of calibration services and study the effect of temperature on CMM performance.

The new facility is vital to NIST's efforts to advance research in metrology, physics, chemistry, electronics, engineering, manufacturing, and materials science. It also will help NIST keep pace with rapid developments in semiconductors, industrial robots, computers, pharmaceuticals, and emerging technologies requiring molecular and atomic-level precision. Natural daylighting, energy conservation, and recycling are incorporated into the "green" building design.