Award Data

This STTR Phase II project will develop commercially viable atomic force microscope (AFM) probes fabricated from ultrananocrystalline diamond. The project will refine the processes developed in Phase I and bring contact and non-contact all-diamond probes to market. Probes using conducting diamond that are chemically and electronically tunable and have superb tribological properties will also be d ...

The proposed Phase 2 project consists of the physical integration of our Phase 1 small, compact exciter with a "flight like" igniter or spark plug capable of hot-fire testing. The exciter/igniter unit will operate to a pre-established subset of expected flight performance requirements established and met in Phase 1. The exciter/igniter unit will physically integrate the exciter electronics with ...

This SBIR Phase II project aims to develop a commercial grade optical probe and system for FDA clinical trials and subsequent commercialization of a population-wide colon cancer screening test. An interdisciplinary research team of engineers, biologists, and clinicians has developed low-coherence enhanced backscattering (LEBS), an optical technique which enables sensing tissue microarchitectural c ...

We will develop an efficient tool for formal verification of PowerPC 750 executables. The PowerPC 750 architecture is used in the radiation-hardened RAD750 flight-control computers that are utilized in many space missions. The resulting tool will be capable of formally checking: 1) the equivalence of two instruction sequences; and 2) properties of a given instruction sequence. The tool will automa ...

Intellectual Merit: This STTR project will develop novel engineered Clostridia strains for fermentation to economically produce butanol as a biofuel from sugars derived from starchy and lignocellulosic biomass. Butanol is an important industrial solvent and potentially a better transportation fuel than ethanol. Recent rising oil prices and limited petroleum resources have generated high interest i ...

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project will investigate the technical and commercial feasibility of coating metal foils with a solid sorbent so that they act as a desulfurizing component for pre-treatment of sulfur-laden liquid fuels. The coated foils will be inserted into a small heat exchanger that acts as a platform unit for conversion of liquid fuels to hydrogen for fue ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a novel hydroxyl ion-conducting polymer membrane for use in anion exchange alkaline fuel cells through a parallel approach based on two novel polymer approaches each combined with nano particle functionality. A key issue with traditional alkaline fuel cells (AFC) is electrolyte and electrode degradation caused by the formi ...

America needs a clean, affordable, reliable and sustainable product or system to obtain heat for residences in cold climates using renewable, carbon-neutral, plentiful, low-cost biomass fuels of diverse types found close to the location of usage. The available biomass could heat hundreds of thousands of homes, and costly natural gas could be directed to higher-value usage. Gasifiers are devices t ...

In Phase 1, CRG demonstrated the feasibility of a novel approach to prepare cyanate ester based elastomers. This approach polymerizes in-situ siloxane within a reactive elastomer precursor matrix in order to achieve an elastomeric material with highly tunable and desired mechanical properties. This methodology shows great potential in materials development for applications such as space deployabl ...

Cornerstone Research Group Inc. (CRG) will develop new shape memory polymer (SMP) deployment mechanisms for actuating thermal protection system (TPS) panels to create a deployable, large surface area aeroshell. This innovation will exploit Veriflex(R) -- CRG's high-performance SMP material -- to create a low-mass actuation system for a deployable aeroshell design. Veriflex(R)-based mechanisms wi ...