Award Data

Thermally induced fatigue and residual stress introduced during fabrication are sources of stress related failure in microelectronics, which raises concerns about product reliability and specification. CFDRC has teamed with experts in the reliability of microelectronics packaging to develop a testing and physics based modeling protocol to correlate material properties and thermal loading conditio ...

Miniaturized base metal electrodes (BME) multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) are of great interest for future missile applications as designers are striving to achieve smaller, lighter, cheaper, faster and better electronic assemblies without sacrificing long-term performance. Unfortunately, screening, reliability and qualifications criteria are either not available or not standardized. In the ...

Space Micro will develop the core of the decision support system, assemble the models and material properties and demonstrate the utility of the program in materials selection on a subset of failures related to a specific test-bed, which will be the attachment of quad-flat no-leads (QFN) and ball grid array (BGA) devices to printed wiring boards using different solders, underfills, QFN or BGA geom ...

Leveraging the results of our Phase I work, the Torch Team proposes to execute laboratory-based experiments to elucidate fundamental micro-debris formation mechanisms to improve optical modeling of impacts. Optical signatures from impacts collected over the last decade have identified definitive micro-debris parameter trends. However, current theories have difficulty reproducing these optical ob ...

Terrorist use of radioactive nuclear materials via nuclear and/or radiological dispersion devices (dirty bombs) is a serious threat. Therefore, it is critical to detect the proliferation of nuclear material. Critical challenges facing this objective include: (a) high sensitivity detection of signature emissions (e.g., gamma rays) from common radioactive isotopes behind shielding, and (b) cost-effe ...

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 ...

Cost-effective application of advanced commercial electronics technologies in DoD space systems requires early development of radiation-hardened-by-design (RHBD) techniques, and use of simulations is critical to the efficiency of this process. CFDRC has developed an integrated, mixed-mode simulation approach allowing their NanoTCAD device physics simulator to interface with commercial circuit simu ...

Fine powder thermal battery cathode materials can exhibit challenging flow properties which makes processing with automated presses difficult.Granulating these powders substantially improves flow properties and reduces the tendency for powder segregation during handling and pressing operations.The properties of Magnesium Oxide (MgO) that lead to good performance in thermal battery separators are n ...

Karagozian & Case, Inc. (K&C) and the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) will develop a re-usable, cost-effective, and accurate dynamic characterization methodology capable of measuring the dynamic material properties of various materials of interest under very high strain rates. Materials property data for various ductile materials (e.g., steel and aluminum) are required as input to f ...

Space Micro and partner institution Arizona State University propose to design and prototype a Programmable Multi-Frequency Transmitter (PMFT) that is compliant with both the Kill Vehicle Modular Open Architecture (KVMOA) and Space Telecommunications Radio System (STRS) standards. The KVMOA maximizes reuse of components and system designs and reduce total ownership costs. The STRS standard allows ...