Award Data

There is an ongoing effort to replace high activity radioactive sources that could pose a risk for use as terrorist weapons with non-radioisotope based technologies. Currently radioactive sources serve a number of critical needs including the treatment and diagnosis of disease, inspection and certification of critical mechanical structures, the sterilization of food and medical products, ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (STTR) project targets the development of novel methodology for the evaluation of a wide range of oxygen carriers, in particular, their attrition resistance, under conditions that broadly account for the process requirements of coal-based chemical looping systems. Existing test protocols and procedures for the evaluation of granular materials do not accurate ...

The ionomer dispersion technology invented at LANL has demonstrated great potential to significantly improve the lifetime of proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells via accelerated stress tests. However, more validation and improvements are needed to make this technology commercially viable for PEM fuel cell-based hydrogen vehicles. The overall project is to further improve and validate this ion ...

Adding thermal insulation to existing building envelopes can be an effective way of reducing building energy use. While most thermal insulation materials are affordable, the cost of installing thermal insulation into existing buildings can be expensive. Real facades are also characterized by many unique elements that affect their rated thermal performance, such as corners, windows, d ...

During Phase I, Aurora Flight Sciences and the University of Massachusetts Lowell propose to demonstrate the feasibility of enhancing a commercially available out-of-autoclave (OOA) carbon prepreg material system (e.g. IM7/5320) via embedded structural health monitoring (SHM) and self-healing capabilities, which can be manufactured by an automated fiber placement (AFP) machine. This proposed "sma ...

Busek and University of Utah propose to develop novel metal organic framework (MOF) material to efficiently capture oxygen in spacecraft cabin environment. The proposed novel MOF is postulated to be capable of separating oxygen from ambient air with high efficiency, and at the same time, be stable to moisture and resistant to decomposition. In Phase I, our team shall synthesize the proposed MOF an ...

NASA emphasizes the need to implement energy harvesting in its future mission activities. By harvesting energy from the ambient surroundings, there is less dependence on a primary power supply (e.g., combustion engines, fuel cells, batteries, solar cells, etc.). Overall power consumption is thereby reduced, equipment weight goes down and logistical supply needs are simplified. Future NASA mission ...

Silicon Carbide based ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) offer the potential to fundamentally change the design and manufacture of aeronautical and space propulsion systems to significantly increase performance and fuel efficiency over current metal-based designs. Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) and our team members at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) will develop, design and fabricat ...

Communication technologies support all NASA space missions, among which autonomous communication technologies are extremely beneficial to future missions. Communication technologies will expand mankind's understanding of planet earth and the universe. As the needs to gather more data, even more advanced antenna technologies will be essential to deliver orders of magnitude more data. Low cost high ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The broad and long-term objective of this project is to amplify the effectiveness of vaccines without the use of chemical or biological adjuvants. We will address this objective by demonstrating the feasibility for small laser- based devices to enhance responses to intradermal vaccination. A number of investigators have shown that a promising new way to make va ...