New statistical technique improves precision of nanotechn...(h an associate professor in the Georgia ...)

"Physics-based models are based on several assumptions that can go wrong in reality," he said. "We could try to identify all the sources of error and correct them, but that is very time-consuming. Statistical techniques can more easily correct the errors, so this process is more geared toward industrial use."

Beyond correcting the errors, the improved precision of the statistical technique could reduce the effort required to produce reliable experimental data on the properties of nanostructures. "With half of the experimental efforts, you can get about the same standard deviation as following the earlier method without the corrections," Wu said. "This translates into fewer time-consuming experiments to confirm the properties."

For the future, the research team which includes Xinwei Deng and Wenjie Mai in addition to those already mentioned plans to analyze the properties of nanowires, which are critical to the operation of a family of nanoscale electric generators being developed by Wang's research team. Correcting for data errors in these structures will require development of a separate model using the same SPAR techniques, Wu said.

Ultimately, SPAR may lead researchers to new fundamental explanations of the nanoscale world.

"One of the key issues today in nanotechnology is whether the existing physical theories can still be applied to explain the phenomena we are seeing," said Wang, who is also director of Georgia Tech's Center for Nanostructure Characterization and Fabrication. "We have tried to answer the question of whether we are truly observing new phenomena, or whether our errors are so large that we cannot see that the theory still works."

Wang plans to use the SPAR technique on future work, and to analyze past research for potential new findings. "What may have seemed like noise could actually be an imp
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