Award Data

Limitations of the existing nuclear grade SiC composites as applied to high-performance nuclear systems include difficulty joining complex geometries and instability of those joints under irradiation, poor initial thermal conductivity and significant conductivity degradation after irradiation, matrix micro-cracking, and difficulty in producing complex shaped components at low cost. Thus, while ...

Three major components—nitrogen, oxygen, and argon—make up 99.96% of Earth’s atmosphere, and measurement of the concentration/flux of these high concentration elements is crucial in studying changes in global climate and ecology. However, the current high-precision measurement technologies are better suited for detecting gases with low concentration, and a new technology needs to be ...

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 ...

The size-dependent concentration of airborne particles plays a critical role in the direct scattering and absorption of light, and in the physical characteristics, lifetime and spatial extent of clouds. These factors affect the earth’s radiation balance, and hence climate. Yet these effects are not adequately quantified, in part because of insufficient data on the size and concentration of atmos ...

One of the key parameters affecting the role of atmospheric aerosols in global climate is aerosol hygroscopicity, which describes the water uptake of aerosol particles. Hygroscopicity affects the scattering of light by individual particles; it is important to heterogeneous chemical transformations; and it plays a significant role in the formation and microphysical properties of clouds, all of whi ...

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 ...

Traditionally, adipic acid is manufactured from the petrochemical feedstocks benzene and cyclohexane via a two-step oxidation process with nitric acid. Nitric acid oxidation produces significant quantities of nitrous oxide (N2O), a GHG regulated due to its contribution to global warming and ozone depletion. Thus current methods for production of widely-used chemicals such as adipic acid form petro ...

The next generation of high energy physics experiments will require detectors for tracking Minimum Ionizing Particles (MIPs) at rates of >1000kHz/mm2 in a radiation environment with a neutron fluence up to 2x1016 neq/cm2. The high radiation dose must be tolerated by the sensors which must last over the experiment lifetime without repair or replacement. In addition the already achieved excellent tr ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase IIB project addresses the need for new widespread datasets to help reduce uncertainties in current predictions of climate change and to improve our understanding of the health impacts of air pollutants. The continued development and commercialization of new compact instruments for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will include modules to measure aerosol ...

Due to enormous growth of Internet traffic, the scale and responsiveness required for delivering applications to end users can be cost-effectively achieved by the increased adoption of cloud-based, virtualized services built by widespread use of compute, storage, and network virtualization. Therefore, IT infrastructures of enterprises, R&E networks (e.g., DOE ESnet), and commercial network op ...