The 2020 Helmholtz Prize in applied metrology was awarded to a team of scientists from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and from the University of Freiburg. Maximilian Kockert, Danny Kojda, Rüdiger Mitdank, Anna Mogilatenko and Saskia F. Fischer (Humboldt-Universität Berlin), and Zhi Wang, Johannes Ruhhammer, Michael Kröner and Peter Woias (University of Freiburg) have succeeded in developing the first standardizable procedure to measure structures in the nanometer range (thousandths of micrometers).

The problem with nanostructured materials is that they often have properties that are completely different from those of macroscopic materials. In the nanometer range, besides the type of material, the form of surfaces – i.e., their geometric dimensions and surface texture – plays a key role. The motto for industrial design and architecture coined a hundred years ago in connection with the Bauhaus school – “form follows function” – no longer applies in the nanometer range. Often, this motto must even be turned on its head for parameters of nanostructured materials – “form defines function”. This allows the material properties to be customized in terms of their shape. It is therefore even more important to be able to measure these material parameters accurately and reliably, which presents metrology with a challenge.

In their work, the team of researchers presented standardizable precision measurements of the Seebeck coefficient; the scope of these measurements can be extended from their model system (silver wires with a diameter in the nanometer range and a single-crystalline structure) to cover other nanostructures and additional parameters. The researchers have thus demonstrated that standardized high-precision measurements over a wide temperature range are possible for comprehensive thermoelectric characterization (i.e., when measuring electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity and the Seebeck coefficient), even for metallic nanomaterials. Their results were published in Scientific Reports.