Award Data

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop a process to increase the productivity and yield of biobutanol from cultures of solvent-forming Clostridium by treating cultures with recently discovered Clostridium quorum-sensing molecules. The biobutanol fermentation can be difficult to operate due to changes in the producing bacteria driven by unknown biological mechanisms, w ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will prove the feasibility of using a photolytic process to separate carbon dioxide (CO2) from monoethanolamine (MEA) scrubbers for carbon capture in power plants. This innovation is based on verified studies showing that photolysis reactions are faster and use significantly less energy than thermal reactions. The carbon-capture proces ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will demonstrate the technical and commercial viability of a novel four-way catalytic converter for lean burn diesel applications that is based on high-surface area nanomaterials applied directly to the inner walls of existing catalytic converter monoliths. While there is ongoing research to integrate diesel particulate filters and the ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project addresses the analysis needs for monitoring perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) in waste water. Perfluorochemicals (PFCs) are bio-accumulative, extremely persistent and toxic; and there is a huge effort surrounding remediation of PFOA and PFOS contaminated areas. Considering the impacts on environment ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project proposes to significantly expand the number of marketable compounds that can be converted from depleted uranium tetrafluoride (DUF4). DUF4 is produced by the reduction of depleted hexafluoride (DUF6), the largest and one of the most toxic waste components of the entire nuclear fuel cycle. Current technology can convert DUF4 into metal ...

The innovations proposed here are Ka-band (38 GHz) group III-nitride power FETs and the dislocation density reducing epitaxial growth methods (LPE) needed for their optimal performance and reliability.Ka-band power transistors with>60% Power Added Efficiency (PAE) are not commercially available. The primary limitations to their manufacture are lack of mature process technology at major GaN foundri ...

Firefly, in collaboration with Rochester Institute of Technology, proposes developing a space solar cell having record efficiency exceeding 40% (AM0) by the introduction of nanowires within the active region of the current limiting sub-cell. The introduction of these nanoscale features will enable realization of an intermediate band solar cell (IBSC), while simultaneously increasing the effective ...

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase II project addresses unmet analysis needs of froth flotation, a separations process widely used in the mining industry to separate worthless gangue from desired mineral particles. Phase I work has demonstrated the preparation of sensor membranes that permit the measurement of collector chemicals used in flotation suspensions. These sensors have ...

Adaptive control offers an opportunity to fulfill present and futureaircraft safety objectives though automatedvehicle recovery while maintaining performanceand stability requirements in the presence of unknown orvarying operating environment.Future aircraft are a natural application of adaptive control. Theseaircraft will be more fuel efficient, have longer operating ranges thoughmore flexible ai ...

Advanced reconfigurable/reprogrammable communication systems will require use of commercial sub 100 nm electronics. Legacy radiation tolerant circuits fail to provide Single Event Upset (SEU) immunity at speeds greater than 500 MHz. New base level logic circuits are needed to provide SEU immunity for high speed circuits afforded by sub 100 nm technology. A completely new circuit and system appr ...