Award Data

In 2011, there were 60,000 dairy farms in the US. Of there, 56,600 had herds of fewer than 500 animals. Currently, manure digester installations are only considered economical for herds of at least 500 animals. There require turbine or diesel generator sets of 100 Kilowatt size and larger. The need exists for a smaller waste to energy conversion approach for implementation on small farms were ...

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 ...

The potential threat of directed energy weapons (DEW) and other high peak power electromagnetic transient signals require radar systems to implement front door protection against high power signals. Fast ultra wideband (UWB) and high power microwave (HPM) signals are not successfully blocked by most current protection technologies. The Phase I work demonstrated a quasi-passive, solid state e ...

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 ...

In Phase I, Sivananthan Laboratories (SL) demonstrated the ability to polish Si(211) wafers, as supplied by a vendor with an already fine polish, to an even better surface smoothness and uniformity. SL also demonstrated the molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth of CdTe films with better crystalline quality and uniformity using SL-polished 2 cm x 2 cm Si(211) samples, compared to those grown on the ...

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 ...

Under the work proposed here, we will develop a physics based comprehensive software for modeling the behavior of a diode pumped alkali laser: DPAL. The software will be designed primarily for a He-Rb DPAL. However, it could easily be applied to DPALs based on other alkali atoms, such as Cs. Furthermore, the model would be versatile enough to be applicable to other high energy lasers as well. ...

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 ...

Accurate prediction of aero-thermal demise of post-intercept debris is a high priority for the United States Missile Defense Agency (MDA). Predictive tools for assessing the aero-thermal demise of intercept debris are needed to support BMDS effectiveness evaluations, flight test and range safety operations, and consequence mitigation assessments. During this Phase I effort, Shearwater Technology ...