Company
Portfolio Data
Back to Company SearchPHYSICAL SCIENCES INC.
UEI: RMG1AZ1ZH8Q7
Number of Employees: 260
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
SBIR/STTR Involvement
Year of first award: 1983
1169
Phase I Awards
559
Phase II Awards
47.82%
Conversion Rate
$136,413,402
Phase I Dollars
$513,965,138
Phase II Dollars
$650,378,540
Total Awarded
Awards
Sharp longwave optics with cost-reduced assembly of bolometer (SLOW-CRAB)
Amount: $249,934 Topic: A244-024
Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) will develop sharp longwave optics with cost-reduced assembly of bolometer (SLOW-CRAB) to provide high quality, lightweight, and low cost imaging optics for large format longwave infrared (LWIR) microbolometer imaging. PSI will leverage its experience with broadband transmissive flat optics to reduce requirements on optical materials for ability to simultaneously achromatize and athermalize the optical system.Ā The flat optics will integrate with other optics to provide a wide high transmission band optical system suitable for a wide variety of thermal imaging applications.Ā PSI will design a high quality lens and present a scalable solution in terms of performance, cost, and key application drivers.
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase I
2025
DOD
ARMY
Direct Cross-domain Optical Data Transfer
Amount: $139,968 Topic: N24B-T026
Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI), in cooperation with University of Southern California (USC), will develop a methodology for Direct, Cross-Domain Optical Data Transfer with Acoustic and Radio Modalities (DOT-ARM) across the air-sea interface. As advanced sensor payloads are developed for unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV), there is an increasing need to transfer sensor data wirelessly and rapidly across the air-sea interface for analysis. Laser communications enable high-speed (>10 Mbs) data transfer, reduce the probability of intercept, and can directly cross from sea to air. A self-coherent detection communications architecture will be used, increasing the bit rate, and making the link more resilient to turbulence. Three modalities will be investigated: sea-to-air, sea-to-surface, and sea-to-satellite. Sea-to-air is the priority of the DOT-ARM methodology: optical communications from UUVs to unmanned airborne vehicles (UAV), directly crossing the air-sea interface. Sea-to-surface allows greater flexibility for DOT-ARM. In challenging conditions, laser communications transfer sensor data from a UUV to an unmanned surface vessel (USV) or gateway buoy. The USV/gateway then relays the sensor data to a UAV using radio frequency (RF) or ultra-violet (UV) communications. Sea-to-satellite will also be investigated. The DOT-ARM methodology enables timely, flexible data transfer across the air-sea interface.
Tagged as:
STTR
Phase I
2025
DOD
NAVY
Next-Generation Atmospheric Water Extraction Enabled by Deliquescent Polymers
Amount: $249,905 Topic: HR0011SB20244-02
Atmospheric water extraction (AWE) has the potential to revolutionize military logistical operations by providing point of need water generation, obviating the need for costly and dangerous transportation of large water volumes to forward operating environments. Existing AWE devices are power-hungry and cumbersome. PSI will develop a new portable AWE system that operates at ultra-high efficiency (<100ĀWh/L of water produced) to generate significant quantities of water in remote environments. Our key innovation focuses on using advanced sorbent materials combined with a novel water release mechanism to separate the captured water from the sorbent. The system leverages a new type of inexpensive polymeric material that is effective across a range of relative humidities and enables continued operations. The system also contains a unique water release mechanism to efficiently liberate the captured water and enable operation with a much lower specific energy consumption than traditional dehumidification devices. In Phase I, PSI will demonstrate the operability of the sorbent material in capturing atmospheric water by constructing and validating a breadboard AWE device and modeling a scaled-up optimized system. In Phase II, the team will construct prototype systems and iteratively improve the design to generate potable water that complies with TB MED 577 standards. The outcome of a successful AWE+ program is the demonstration of an ultra-efficient atmospheric water extraction device that reduces the logistical burdens associated with transporting and supplying water in field-forward locations.
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase I
2025
DOD
DARPA
Chemical and Physical Profiling to Attribute Illicit Substance Origins
Amount: $174,955 Topic: DHS251-001
Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) proposes to develop a hardware package for chemical and physical profiling that will provide a common set of measurements for seized drug samples and enable the detection and identification of features useful for tracing drugs back to a common origin. The chemical profiling will be accomplished with any commercial off-the-shelf gas-chromatograph mass spectrometer (GC-MS) system that will be upgraded with advanced algorithms designed to detect co-eluting species and low concentration compounds. The physical profiling will be accomplished using high resolution visible imagery with CNN based identification and computer vision approaches for identifying subtle variations in color, shape, and imprint patterns. A multimodal large language model (MM-LLM) will ingest chemical and physical information and provide descriptions of identified features which will be analyzed with an ensemble classifier to make a final classification of the substance and identify common sources using cluster analysis. Finally, a graph database and search algorithms will ingest physical and chemical information to identify patterns in the manufacturing and distribution of the drugs. The Phase I effort will focus on demonstrating the performance of the chemical and physical profiling algorithms using proxy samples, using the MM-LLM to provide accurate descriptions, and identify common samples. The proposed capability is expected to achieve chemical detection with an 85% probability of detection and identification for co-eluting and low concentration species with a sensitivity of 10 parts per billion range and pill detection with an 85% probability of reidentification from high resolution imagery.
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase I
2025
DHS
Next Generation, Aviation-Ready Modular Energy Storage Solution for Electric and Hybrid Aircraft
Amount: $149,991 Topic: Ai02
Imperia Batteries, a division of Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI), will develop and demonstrate a modular energy storage solution for integration into large unmanned aerial vehicles in the 1500 to 5000 lbs size class. A modular solution enables straightforward integration across multiple UAV platforms and helps to keep lifecycle costs down. During the Phase I, Imperia will work closely with Raytheon to understand battery specifications and requirements for the target vehicle(s) in order to design the energy modules. Imperia will conduct a trade study on cell level components to ensure suitable battery performance as well as manufacturability, cost, and supply chain requirements. Additionally, Imperia will design electronics and packaging solutions for the designed energy module. In the Phase II, Imperia will prototype the energy module and expand validation activities to ensure form, fit, and function. Successful completion of these efforts will demonstrate the readiness of the technology for further scale-up and demonstrations.
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase I
2025
NASA
Bio-inspired Energy Dissipating Structures for Enhanced Airdrop Capabilities
Amount: $250,000 Topic: HR0011SB20244-03
Physical Sciences Inc. and George Mason University will use a biomimetic approach to develop novel biopolymer foams which exhibit high energy dissipating characteristics, low-cost, long-term shelf-stability, and the potential to be entirely produced from cellulosic waste. The team will focus on bio-inspired structures that provide significant advancements over conventional engineered structures to achieve excellent energy absorption capacities.ĀThe unique combination of material properties and form factor has the potential to provide a new paradigm for applications ranging from enhanced airdrop to packing and shipping materials and to other fields such as aerospace and construction. In Phase I, PSI will develop a 100% bioderived material integrated into a form factor with high energy dissipation characteristics as confirmed by finite element analysis (FEA) modeling. The Phase I results will provide the basis for Phase II, where we will produce 6öx6ö samples for impact testing, and incrementally scale-up the process to a full sized 36öx96ö sheet of energy dissipating material. In the Phase II option, we will develop and execute a strategy for scale-up and implementation. The outcome of a successful project will be the development of a new bio-derived energy dissipating material with a bio-inspired form factor that can be inexpensively produced at scale.Ā
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase I
2025
DOD
DARPA
Carbon Capture and Conversion for Mobile Sources
Amount: $199,995 Topic: C58-23b
Statement of the problem or situation that is being addressed in your application. The transportation sector accounts for a significant portion of CO2 emissions and is therefore an important focus of decarbonization efforts. Battery electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cells are promising alternatives, however, they are difficult to implement for heavy-duty marine and overland transportation. A potential mitigation strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emission is to capture and upcycle the evolved CO2. This illustrates the need to develop a regenerative CO2 separation and transformation technology that efficiently sequesters CO2 from concentrated exhaust streams for generation of platform chemicals or fuels. Ľ General statement of how this problem is being addressed. This small business proposes an innovative approach for selective carbon capture from mobile point sources and subsequent transformation to platform chemicals or fuel. The innovation is a two-stage sorbent bed with high surface area that is functionalized to enable selective adsorption of exhaust gases. The proposed approach will result in a regenerative sorbent and catalyst system to upcycle the captured carbon dioxide to valuable fuel. The small business performed several pre-proposal experiments that have demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed process. Ľ What is to be done in Phase I? The overall goal of the Phase I program is to demonstrate the feasibility and economic viability of the proposed approach. During the Phase I effort, this small business will: (a) demonstrate synthesis of selected sorbents; (b) demonstrate selective CO2 capture from simulated exhaust streams; (c) demonstrate transformation of the captured CO2 to fuel; and (d) perform techno-economic and lifecycle analyses to outline pathways for scale up and further development and optimization in Phase II. Ľ Commercial Applications and Other Benefits. The proposed approach will demonstrate a rapid, economically viable process to capture and upgrade CO2 from merchant marine vessels. Additionally, the process can be utilized for reduction of emissions from other mobile point sources such as rail transport, heavy trucking, and cruise ships.
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase I
2024
DOE
High-Sensitivity Benzene Detector for Environmental Field Surveys
Amount: $294,253 Topic: R
Project Summary/Abstract Benzene is a known carcinogen linked to leukemia with primary entry into the human body via the lungs, thus detecting, tracking and localizing emission sources in real-time are critical for preventing personal exposures. Premature death from air pollution (due to household air, ambient particulates and ozone) has increased drastically over the past two decades and was responsible for over 6.7 million deaths in 2019. The complexity and high operational cost of existing laborious measurement tools for benzene are responsible for infrequent air sampling activities. The lack of a real-time continuously monitoring benzene instrument for ambient air is making the impact of environmental exposures on the general population very difficult to assess. An easily-operating instrument capable of measuring benzene continuously in real-time with sensitivity of parts-per-billion by volume (ppbv) and adaptable to typical survey modalities (e.g. mobile, fixed, and walking) is the overall goal of this research and development program. The proposed project will improve both scientific knowledge on the impact of benzene on the health of the general population and technical capability in the measurement of benzene in real-time with high-sensitivity and fast time response. The Phase I Specific Aims are to engineer a laboratory prototype to detect benzene, establish the performance of the laboratory prototype, and demonstrate operations in outdoor urban environments. This proposed benzene detector will take advantage of key enabling technologies including recently available room-temperature quantum cascade lasers, custom compact system electronics designs, rugged multipass measurement cell designs, and data analytics for estimating emission rate and source. This real-time continuously monitoring benzene detector will enhance the understanding of its impact on human to reduce or eliminate cancers caused by exposure to benzene.
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase I
2024
HHS
NIH
Spectral Data Fusion for the Detection of Existing and Emerging Synthetic Opioid Analogs
Amount: $174,916 Topic: DHS241-001
Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) proposes to develop a multimodal data fusion algorithm that is based on deep learning algorithms to detect previously unseen fentanyl analogs. The algorithm will be deployed on a hardware kit which contains a handheld Raman spectrometer and mass spectrometer (MS). The Raman spectrometer will be a handheld adaptation of PSI’s existing through-container Raman chemical sensor based on a spatial heterodyne spectrometer, which has improved limits of detection compared to conventional dispersive Raman spectrometers. A commercial off the shelf MS will be utilized to minimize additional hardware development cost. The proposed data fusion algorithm will leverage prior work performed by PSI on one-dimensional convolutional neural networks for spectral identification of chemicals with Raman spectrometers. The Phase I effort will focus on developing the detection algorithm separately for both the Raman and MS data channels, and subsequently demonstrating improved probability of detection and false alarms of the data fusion architecture compared to the independent channels. In parallel, a preliminary design for the hardware kit will be developed, which will be built and assembled in a subsequent Phase II program.
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase I
2024
DHS
Preserving Rigorous Electromagnetic Structures using Topology Optimization (PRESTO)
Amount: $179,965 Topic: AF24A-T001
Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI), in collaboration with Virginia Tech., will develop a rigorous electromagnetic design suite that adapts low-profile planar electromagnetic structures onto doubly curved surfaces. This critical technology will be developed to support the Air Force’s need for high performance radio frequency technologies that can be placed at arbitrary locations on airborne platforms in order to enhance situational awareness in contested electromagnetic environments. The software suite, Preserving Rigorous Electromagnetic Structures using Topology Optimization (PRESTO) will enable the design and simulation of conformal metasurfaces that either mitigate the influence of substrate curvature or use the innate property of the system to enhance the electromagnetic modulation capabilities of metasurfaces to generate novel electromagnetic solutions with improved performance.
Tagged as:
STTR
Phase I
2024
DOD
USAF