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 ...

Historically, the monitoring and detection of biological threats has been carried out via the deployment of high sensitivity / high complexity monitoring nodes to insure high probability of detection and low false alarm rate. Unfortunately, this detection strategy has inherent limits with respect to coverage and response due to its high deployment/support costs, mandating a new approach to environ ...

Current scene projection hardware is challenged to simultaneously meet the requirements for high peak temperature (> 2000K), high resolution (> 1Kx1K), response time < 1 ms, cryogenic and temporally uniform photon flux. MEMS, Resistor arrays, liquid crystals, and photonic crystals all suffer in one or more areas. MEMS suffer from flicker and low dynamic range. Resistor arrays suffer from low frame ...

Nalas Engineering and Johns Hopkins University collaborated in a Phase I STTR program to study reactive mixtures of HI3O8 and nanocomposite fuels previously developed by the Weihs Group. These fuel/oxidizer mixtures are uniquely able to simultaneously produce heat and biocidal iodine gas, a combination designed to destroy biological weapons. The team at Nalas focused on evaluating conditions for p ...

Solid oxide fuel cells have long suffered from degradation due to impurities in the fuel and complexities associated with dissimilar materials and high operating temperatures.This degradation lowers the usable cell power output and requires ancillary equipment for fuel sulfur removal and reformation.A unique microstructure for the tubular anode will be produced using a novel freeze-casting techniq ...

Achieving strong and durable polymer adhesion to inorganic substrates under various environmental conditions is challenging. The required long-term durability tests are over long time- and length-scales, beyond the capability of current modeling, and extensive experimental testing is needed. Currently, no commercially available method exists for monitoring how a polymer/substrate system evolves du ...

Near-Field Scanning Microwave Microscopy (SMM) is a technique relying on a raster scan of a microwave probe across a sample surface, while measuring its reflected microwave signal. The existing technologies are limited to the surface analysis, and are not compatible with liquid environment. These limitations are addressed by the proposed wideband 3D tomography SMM with sub-surface analysis capabil ...

Waste generation at forward bases creates significant challenges; its disposal presents an economic cost with no direct benefit and its accumulation or burning is a health hazard. The bioconversion of waste into useful compounds could save thousands annually for every soldier and tens of millions in capital expenditure. However, widespread adoption is impeded by low conversion efficiency. We propo ...

Goodman Technologies LLC (GTL) in partnership with Robocasting Enterprises LLC (a Small Business spin-off from Sandia National Laboratories technology transfer program) and the University of Hawaii at Manoa, (UHM, a Minority Institution) propose to demonstrate the Robocasting process for 3D printing alumina (Al2O3), boron carbide (B4C), and silicon carbide (SiC) advanced ceramic materials. Using ...

LongWave Photonics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Virginia Diodes are proposing the use of the Terahertz Quantum-Cascade Lasers (QCL) combined with a Schottky diode detector for high dynamic range heterodyne imaging. Two single-mode, distributed feedback (DFB) QCLs with milliwatt power levels will be used as local oscillator and illumination for imaging. The QCLs will be downconverte ...