Award Data

NanoSD, Inc. with its partners will develop a transparent, nanostructured thermally insulating film that can be applied to existing single-pane windows to reduce heat loss. To produce the nanostructured film, the team will create hollow ceramic or polymer nanobubbles and consolidate them into a dense lattice structure using heat and compression. Because it is mostly air, the resulting nanobubble s ...

SixPoint Materials will create low-cost, high-quality vertical gallium nitride (GaN) substrates using a multi-phase production approach that employs both hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) technology and ammonothermal growth techniques to lower costs and maintain crystal quality. Substrates are thin wafers of semiconducting material needed for power devices. In its two-phase project, SixPoint Mate ...

GaN-based devices are the basis of a variety of modern electronics applications, especially in optoelectronics and high-frequency / high-power electronics. These devices are based on epitaxial films grown on single-crystal wafers. The single-crystal wafer substrates are limiting because of their size, expense, mechanical properties and availability. If one could make GaN-based devices over large a ...

A critical aspect of exoskeleton control that has to date introduced a performance limitation is the ability of the exoskeleton to recognize the intent of the operator so it can apply assistance to their desired motion. This intent recognition effort is typically solved using ad-hoc methods where subject matter experts make design decisions and tune transitions to identify intended maneuvers as re ...

Ultrasound is a therapeutic modality which has been used clinically for 60 years, but has been limited in practice by the complexity of the technology. Recent research has allowed for the development of a portable, wearable, long duration, low intensity therapeutic ultrasound system. The system is powered by battery, and can be applied by a user to deliver up

We propose the development of a novel aerodynamic modeling approach making use of fully unstructured grids for unsteady panel aerodynamic models for aeroelastic and aeroservoelastic analysis. The unsteady aerodynamic code will be integrated with an existing suite of aeroelastic and aeroservoelastic analysis tools making it possible to perform aeroelastic and aeroservoelastic analysis of complex v ...

High-energy space radiation from Galactic Cosmic Rays and Solar Particle Events (SPEs) pose significant risks to equipment and astronaut health in NASA missions. Energetic particles from SPEs associated with flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) may adversely affect not only beyond-Low-Earth-Orbit missions, but also aircraft avionics, communications, and airline crew/passenger health. It is cru ...

Chromologic (CL) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) propose to continue the Phase II STTR development and demonstration of a Multifunctional Environmental Digital Scanning Electron Microprobe (MEDSEM) instrument that transmits high energy beams of electrons sequentially using a two-dimensional array of multiple, miniaturized electron probes into a planetary atmosphere and strike ...

Solar Particle Events (SPEs) represent a major hazard for extravehicular maneuvers by astronauts in Earth orbit, and for eventual manned interplanetary space travel. They can also harm aircraft avionics, communication and navigation. We propose to develop a system to aid forecasters in the prediction of such events, and in the identification/lengthening of "all clear" time periods when there is ...

Prime Photonics proposes to team with Dr. Duke of Virginia Tech to develop a multi-mode, enhanced piezoelectric acoustic emission sensing system to couple large damage events to local distribution of damage accommodation. Our system will be centered around an instrument designed to accept the output of a piezoelectric transducer sensitive to in-plane acoustic events. The signal processing path w ...