Award Data

ABSTRACT: MicroLink and its collaborators, Rochester Institute of Technology and Magnolia Solar, will develop a high-efficiency, single-junction, epitaxial lift-off (ELO) GaAs solar cell by incorporating nano-scale features, such as quantum dots and optically functional textures, within the solar cell structure. The principal technical objective of the project is to increase the AM0 efficiency o ...

ABSTRACT: CU Aerospace (CUA) and team partner the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) propose to perform research, development and demonstration of experimental quenching free measurements of heat-release in a realistic highly turbulent plasma-assisted flame. Kinetics models will be correspondingly updated and detailed 3D multiphysics simulations will be validated by the measuremen ...

ABSTRACT: Modern gas-turbine engines designs for the next-generation warfighter need to reduce exhaust gas temperatures to reduce effective thermal footprint thereby improving the mission capability. In such situations, high-altitude engine operation is often limited by the overall combustion efficiency, lean flame blow out (LBO) limit, and combustion instabilities that results in narrower opera ...

ABSTRACT: Living systems rely on pervasive vascular networks to enable a plurality of biological function, exemplified by natural composite structures that are lightweight, high-strength, and capable of mass and energy transport. In contrast, synthetic composites possess high strength-to-weight ratios but lack the dynamic functionality of their natural counterparts. CU Aerospace, with team partne ...

ABSTRACT: The innovation proposed is a computationally-tractable, physics-based, portable turbulent combustion modeling strategy for application to a wide range of Air Force aero-propulsive systems, including augmentors, liquid rockets and scramjets. This modeling strategy will be implemented within an Application Programming Interface (API) library suitable for easy integration within Air Force ...

ABSTRACT: Due to scarcity of spectrum, Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) becomes a needed technology to improve the utilization of electromagnetic spectrum for DoD satellite communication. However, current DSA approaches are developed for terrestrial communications without addressing the unique challenges for SATCOM environments such as error-prone spectrum sensing, high mobility, and large coverage. ...

ABSTRACT: This proposal is organized around a system decomposition (break the system down to understand and exploit) then composition (rebuild the system with improved defensive measures) methodology. The first step to understanding a system is gathering all associated documentation. Then based on that insight the system is decomposed by discovering susceptibilities (inherent weaknesses) and a ...

ABSTRACT: Most cross-domain information flows require some human intervention to ensure that the requirements for releasability are met. Such intervention is expensive and slow, and can form a bottleneck in operations. Unfortunately, fully automated sharing of information across security domain boundaries is also fraught with difficulties due to problems with identifying releasable information, a ...

ABSTRACT: Coordinating and sharing information across multi-level security (MLS) networks are of great interest in many military applications. However, it is very challenging to accomplish those goals due to the heterogeneous security classifications of different network domains. The recent proposed cross-domain solutions (CDS) provide initial steps to make such applications possible. However, th ...

ABSTRACT: This project addresses the need for high-efficiency broad-spectrum PV cells. The proposed original PV design is based on quantum dots with built-in charge (Q-BIC), where the dot charging is realized by selective doping of dot medium. The preliminary data demonstrate that the charged dots placed in a single p-n-junction strongly enhance harvesting and conversion of sub-bandgap photons an ...