Award Data

MDA is developing deployable airborne systems such as the Airborne Laser (ABL) for boost-phase missile defense. The ABL’s mission would significantly benefit from enhanced target detection and ranging capabilities. We propose an active sensing system compatible with ABL that is based on HgCdTe avalanche photodiodes (APDs), which are an attractive choice for active sensing applications because t ...

Fiber Materials Inc. (FMI) teamed with Aerojet Sacramento proposes to advance low cost, non-eroding material systems based on carbon fiber reinforced carbon silicon carbide (C-SiC) to high performance divert and attitude control system (DACS) components for the SM-3 TDACS application. In addition the program will develop advanced ceramic matrix composite manufacturing processes to further the mat ...

Fiber Materials Inc. (FMI) has developed and delivered carbon fiber reinforced silicon carbide (C-SiC) composite nozzles and thrust chambers for solid and liquid/gel fueled divert and attitude control systems (DACS) to Aerojet. The C-SiC material system has been validated with 3700 degrees F solid propellant. The proposed program will address identified barriers to transition of the material sys ...

Hydrogen isotopes have been shown to reduce the electrical effects of various semiconductor defects. Specifically, monoatomic hydrogen and deuterium passivate the electrical activity of defects such as dislocations in long-wavelength HgCdTe grown on Si. We propose a novel method of controlling the intake of hydrogen in HgCdTe IRFPAs by using the H2/He plasma afterglow formed by flowing plasma-gene ...

Current state-of-the-art infrared focal plane arrays (IRFPAs) are based on HgCdTe material epitaxially grown on bulk CdZnTe substrates. The size of the IRFPAs is limited by the size of the available CdZnTe substrates and the thermal mismatch between CdZnTe and the Si readout circuit, which misaligns the photodiode array with respect to the circuit during heating and cooling cycles. Having HgCdTe ...

Lead in household paint and dust is a serious health hazard, as low level lead exposure can result in a number of adverse health effects, especially in children. Onsite and real time detection and quantification of lead in paint/dust are very important to homeowners and certified lead based paint removal professionals. Toward this end, both field-portable equipment (such as X ray fluorescence ins ...

Lead in household paint and dust is a serious health hazard, as low-level lead exposure can result in a number of adverse health effects, especially in children. Onsite and real-time detection and quantification of lead in paint/dust are very important to homeowners and certified lead-based paint removal professionals. Toward this end, both field-portable equipment (such as X-ray fluorescence inst ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project will develop and ready for commercialization a scalable, low-cost process for purification of water containing Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs) using anodic oxidation with boron-doped ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD®) thin films. Resent research demonstrated that there is considerable potential for the development of electrochemica ...

High performance single-band focal plane arrays (FPAs) are sometimes unable to discriminate a target from its background when they present similar infrared radiation at a given wavelength which may occur even if the temperatures of the objects are different. Two-Color FPAs offer an additional wavelength that allows easy identification in such cases. Large-format dual-band FPAs are highly needed f ...

Recent development of Antimonide-based Type-II superlattice infrared detectors has resulted in significant breakthroughs in terms of device performance as well as FPA imaging quality. Improvement in material quality and processing technique, as well as evolutionary modifications in device architecture have demonstrated the advantages of the material system over alternatives, and proven it as a via ...