Award Data

The ability to detect radiological materials at standoff distances of a kilometer or more would be invaluable to national security and nonproliferation efforts. In particular, it is important to be able to distinguish isotopes of uranium and other elements associated with nuclear weapons development and use. Current methods for identifying radiological isotopes require direct sampling. Laser ba ...

As part of its mission to understand the fundamental forces and particles of nature as manifested in nuclear matter, DOE is funding an experiment to measure the electric dipole moment of neutron. This sophisticated experiment tests the standard model by monitoring the response of neutrons in crossed electric and magnetic fields. This Phase I project will investigate a method for measuring the str ...

Deep borehole disposal of high level nuclear waste has been acknowledged by most experts as the best and safest method to permanently dispose the large volumes/ tons of such waste that have been generated (military and civilian) and surface stored over many decades at various sites around the country. Surface storage of such materials is not ideal. The cost of the required wells (drilling and com ...

In this phase-I proposal, the effect of terrestrial cosmic rays on the failure rate of commercial 1200V SiC power MOSFETs will be studied. The goal of the study is to quantify the appropriate breakdown voltage de-rating needed for SiC MOSFETs subject to cosmic rays. The failure rate of SiC power MOSFETs as a function of the reverse blocking voltage will be determined and compared to failure rate o ...

Additive Manufacturing (AM), where three-dimensional (3D) objects are created from a digital model by depositing and fusing successive layers of material, provides the ability to produce low-volume, customized products with complex geometries relatively quickly at a moderate cost. However, AM processes sometimes fail to produce acceptable parts, due to either geometric in- accuracy (e.g., shrinkag ...

Metal casting is an important manufacturing process and most castings are made by small to mid-sized foundries. Sand molded castings account for 85% of all iron and steel castings produced and approximately 5 out of 30 major casting defects including gas blows and sand burn-on are related to poor sand mold atmosphere control. Mold atmosphere control should become more crucial in the coming years a ...