Award Data

This SBIR Phase I project will develop the manufacturing capability for the production of ultra-low-background copper for use in electronic interconnects and support architecture- Copper is an attractive electronic and support material because of its favorable conductivity and mechanical properties- Fortuitously, the material can also be electroplated with high radiopurity, particularly if the ele ...

One of the most promising concepts of advanced high temperature nuclear reactor systems utilizes liquid metal coolants to optimize heat transfer, neutronics, safety, and compactness- Molten lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) is one of the primary candidates for such coolants due to its unique thermo-mechanical and neutronics properties- The structural components of advanced reactors must be corrosion res ...

Hydrogen fueled PEMFC stack systems for powering automobiles offer an excellent opportunity for the United States to reduce its dependence on foreign oil and to reduce emissions- However, cost of the fuel cell power system is still too high compared to the 2020 DOE target of $40/kW- The achievable stack power density is the single most dominant factor affecting cost of automotive stacks and it is ...

The Department of Energy operates various linear particle accelerators that consume massive amounts of electricity- One of the key components of a particle accelerator is the radio frequency (RF) power amplifier- By increasing the efficiency of this amplifier while keeping its cost down, it is possible to save considerable amounts of energy and reduce operating costs- RF power amplifiers convert e ...

This project will develop a flexible longitudinal electron optical system based on high-precision radio-frequency cavities for short and intense electron bunch compressions, both in the energy and time domains. The proposed system is designed to be insertable into an existing transmission electron microscope column to upgrade its temporal resolution. Active phase-space control enables broad ranges ...

Finding better ways to measure rhizosphere properties has the potential to transform agriculture. Better understanding of the root-microbe-soil interactions that characterize the rhizosphere will help reduce fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide inputs, improve effective carbon dioxide sequestration, enhance biofuel crop production, and lead to more efficient farms with higher profitability. But th ...

Roughly 40% of USAF maintenance records have poorly coded work unit codes. This degrades aircraft pre-induction analysis and fleet-wide analysis of top drivers. Manual methods to scrub the data take years to develop for each air platform. Cybernet designed a machine learning algorithm to automatically correct coding errors without expert input. The Smart Data Cleanser (SDC) performed 4 years of wo ...

The aircraft Nondestructive Inspection Section, 76 AMXG/MXDEN needs a more efficient and effective means to track surface inspections, specifically Ultrasonic (UT) thickness measurements.UT thickness inspections are part of a daily workload for 76 AMXG/MXDEN and can occur on each aircraft that is inspected.Close-range, hand-held UT thickness measurement are currently recorded manually using pencil ...

Reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels has been dentified as one of the most important and difficult problems facing our society. The post combustion CO2 capture from flue gas is particularly challenging due to the relatively low pressure (1 atm) and high temperature (~70 ºC) of flue gas, and its small CO2 concentration (

Environmental sensor networks capable of taking data quickly enough to capture minute-scale fluctuations and durable enough to capture these data for entire seasons provide essential information for studying the seasonal and annual effects of environmental activity across complete ecosystems. The models informed by this data are useful for predicting both short- and long-term changes to economical ...