Award Data

The ever-decreasing size of the electronic microchips and the ever-increasing density of electronic components required to support future Air Force platforms are creating the problem of substantial localized heat generation that can impair component operation. State of the art thermal interface materials (TIMs), that are used to dissipate heat from the source to the spreader in a microchip, are se ...

There is significant opportunity for energy efficiency improvements in the industrial and manufacturing sectors in the U.S., both from the production and consumption perspective. Higher energy density battery materials will play a role in both, through improved storage of electricity from renewable sources, the enabling of electric vehicles, and through the development of longer lasting, higher po ...

Thermopile arrays manufactured using integrated process compatible materials and micro-machining will provide high performance with low manufacturing cost. Black Forest Engineering (BFE) teamed with Case Western Reserve University will design thermopiles using silicon based semiconductors and compare performance. Low cost thermopiles, differentially coupled with advanced BFE CMOS readout, will pr ...

This Small Business Technology Transfer Phase I project will develop a new system for fabrication and manipulation of carbon nanotube (CNT) composites. The system will use holographic optical trapping (HOT) with a spatial light modulator (SLM) and a new form of nano-controlled photo-polymerization. This tool will allow the creation of a new class of carbon-nanotube polymer composite materials wit ...

Ice crystals can form spontaneously from the freezing of water droplets at temperatures colder than -38

The Navy is developing an electromagnetic (EM) launcher for long-range naval surface-fire-support. Severe operating conditions of the EM system place stringent requirements for materials, including high current and magnetic fields, high temperatures, contact with liquid metals, high stress/gouging from balloting contacts and high-speed-sliding electrical-contact with an Al armature. Engineered Coa ...

This SBIR/STTR project delivers an ultra-low power structural health monitoring (SHM) system that uses autonomous, wirelessly embedded sensors to monitor and assess structural integrity in wind turbine blades. EASE features impedance-based active SHM, which is highly sensitive to damage like cracks, delimitations, mass variations, fastener failures and stiffness changes. Blades are the only wind t ...

Currently large capacity cryostats, capable of hosting experiments for many qubits, require expensive and hard to obtain liquid cryogens. A few small cryo-free systems exist but they are non-ideal for this use. An opportunity exists for a large scale, c

This Small Business Technology Transfer Research phase I program will develop a new class of uncooled THz detectors for the 1-10THz band with a novel design using surface plasmon resonant cavities with integrated metal-insulator-metal tunneling diodes as the detecting element. Tunneling diodes provide ultrafast broadband response, potentially into the visible (300THz), but demonstrated performanc ...

This Small Business Technology Transfer Research phase I program will develop a new class of surface plasmon enhanced photovoltaic devices that exhibit increased current collection. Photon management, the manipulation of the incident optical field to increase the probability that a photon is absorbed in the active region of the cell, is critical to the development of next generation thin film sol ...