Award Data

Advances in materials and automation are rapidly reshaping the American manufacturing economy, and must be embraced to sustain a strong manufacturing sector in the United States. Additive manufacturing is possibly the fastest growing example of this trend, growing at an astonishing compound annual growth rate of 25.7%. The plastic materials market for additive manufacturing, valued at $700M in 202 ...

Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are used in food packaging, as coatings for cloth (e.g. Scotchgard), firefighting foams, electronics, and industrial and automotive components. Being perfluorinated species, they are engineered to breakdown slowly (half-life >92 years in water), and thus persist for very long times. Their high water-solubility makes them especially dangerous, and much like perchlo ...

Current petroleum-derived-plastics contain additives such as phthalates or bisphenolA that are harmful to human health and the environment. Thus, it’s critical to replace such toxic non-biodegradable plastics with biodegradable bioplastics. To meet bioplastics production need, Altex, and Texas A&M University (TAMU) have teamed up to utilize renewable biomass, such as forest residue, agricultural ...

IFOS is developing a multifunctional whole-blood analysis lab-on-a-chip platform for assessment of kidney health. The IFOS innovations are found in each subsystem, including photonic integrated circuits (PICs), microelectronics, and biochemical microfluidics. The unique differentiated design is expected to result in a low SWaP-C, highly manufacturable, and highly reliable on-demand measurement pla ...

A program to develop a compact, MLA-based, LWIR, full-motion-video hyperspectral imager for chemical detection is proposed. The proposed Hyperspectral Chemical Imaging Sensor (HyCIS) builds upon Surface Optics’ real-time hyperspectral imaging activities, including our 3D full-motion-video spectral imaging (FMV-SI) technology and our MIDIS hyperspectral image processor. Simultaneously sampling 16 ...

GTL has been developing a suite of transformational technologies that have the capability to disrupt the traditional launch vehicle paradigm.BHL composite cryotank technology provides a four times improvement over large aluminum iso-grid tanks, offering a 6 percentage point improvement in small stage PMF. Superior Stability Engine is an innovative liquid rocket engine configured to maximize combus ...

Current prototype motors and inverters for small aircraft electric propulsion have impressive efficiency of about 95 and 97% nbsp;and typical power density of a little over 2kw/kg and 5kw/kg respectively. We can improve each of these metrics with a rigid winding which is formed in situ to increase slot fill and a 99.5% efficient inverter based on massively parallel, wide bandgap power switches. Wi ...

NASA and NASA funded missions/instruments such as Aura/MLS (Microwave Limb Sounder), SOFIA/upGREAT and STO/STO-2 have demonstrated the need for local oscillator (LO) sources between 30 and 300 um (1 and 10 THz). For observations gt;2 THz, technologically mature microwave sources typically have microwatt power levels which are insufficient to act as LOs for a multi-element heterodyne receiver.LongW ...

The experience of building the NEA Scout solar Sail resulted in the realization that new manufacturing technology would be required to build solar sails significantly larger than NEA Scout. During Phase I, NeXolve successfully developed and demonstrated fab and fold processes and scalable-modular pathfinder mechanisms that can be fully developed to support fabrication and packaging of larger solar ...

NASA future applications require non- incremental advances in high temperature materials.nbsp; Specifically, advanced future propulsion systems require significant improvement in the upper temperature operating limit of composite materials.nbsp;Carbon-carbon (C-C) composites exhibit unique properties on increasing strength with temperature but suffer from oxidation at temperatures above 550 C.nbsp ...