Award Data

The primary objective of CU Aerospace's Phase I work will be to investigate innovative iodine injection concepts for the chemical oxygen-iodine laser (COIL) that improve mixing at higher total pressures. The designs will be made to significantly improve the pressure recovery of COIL systems while retaining efficiency. The results of the Phase I research will lay the foundation for developing a h ...

Despite considerable progress with bulk HgCdTe photovoltaic technology, difficulties persist in sensing wavelengths longer than 12 microns with bulk alloy material due to the limitations imposed by high Auger recombination rates and large tunneling dark currents. Strained layer superlattices using HgTe layers and lattice mismatched layers based on ZnTe alloys are an extremely promising alternative ...

EPIR Technologies demonstrated in Phase I of this project the ability to polish small GaSb wafers to an epi-ready state. Surfaces smoother than those of typical wafers sold by the best supplier of GaSb substrates for SL growth were obtained. In Phase II, we propose to build upon the experience gained in Phase I to establish a more automated polishing procedure to consistently obtain even smoothe ...

Many advanced HgCdTe (MCT) infrared detector structures are grown by the molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) technique, which is especially sensitive to small imperfections, impurities, precipitates, and polishing damage on the substrate surface. In order to achieve very high crystalline quality MCT structures, the substrate surface must be of superior quality (MBE-quality). EPIR demonstrated the ability ...

The MDA's request to detect, track and discriminate long range targets requires infrared focal plane arrays (IRFPAs) that have higher sensitivities, longer cutoff wavelengths (>14 µm), larger formats (> 256 x 256), and higher operating temperatures than the current infrared technology. PbSnTe is an ideal material for the MDA's requirements. Its carrier mobilities and quantum efficiencies are comp ...

End-to-end communications systems are often so complex that system designers have difficulty keeping track of the constraints, trades, interface requirements, and interdependencies among components. The Communications System Taxonomy (CommTax) and Toolkit proposed herein represents further refinement of an innovative tool that Infinite Global Infrastructures has recently developed internally to as ...

C2BMC is an important component of BMDS. The logistics support tail sustainment challenges in C2BMC are related to the unusual spiral development process employed by C2BMC. Formal metrics such as MTTR and MLDT have not been defined. Nor have spare parts analysis, training needs analysis or documentation support issues been formalized. There is enormous scope for both process re-engineering and tec ...

Driven partly by a succession of catastrophic accidents, the U.S. armed services began insensitive munitions (IM) technology development some time ago. However, most of these efforts to date, including new packaging technologies, have focused on tactical applications such as bombs, small missiles, and tank ammunition, and have effectively left the large solid-fueled rocket IM state-of-the-art dan ...

High performance infrared detectors are highly needed for next generation ballistic missile defense missions. Type II InAs/GaSb superlattices represent the most promising material system capable of delivering a more affordable and producible focal plane array (FPA) technology than the current technology, while at the same time exhibiting similar or better performance. Two of the major challenges ...

Cheaper and higher performance infrared detectors in the mid and long wavelength infrared (MWIR and LWIR) spectral bands are needed for next generation ballistic missile defense programs. Type II InAs/GaSb superlattices represent the most promising material system capable of delivering a more affordable and producible focal plane array (FPA) technology than the current technology, while at the sa ...