Award Data

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 ...

IST-Rolla developed two nonlinear filters for spacecraft orbit determination during the Phase I contract. The theta-D filter and the cost based filter, CBF, were developed and used in various orbit determination scenarios. The scenarios were application to low Earth orbit, range only, and range and range rate estimation. The modified state observer was also developed to estimate uncertainty in t ...

QM Power will build and empirically test Space and Cryogenic qualified preproduction Parallel Magnetic Circuit [PMC] 1-5 HP motor/actuators with electronic controllers. These preproduction prototypes will demonstrate lower operating power requirements for cryogenic motor/actuator components used in Space applications. PMC is an enabling technology having a broader peak power and high efficiency r ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project is to fabricate, characterize, and verify performance of a new type of frequency steered acoustic transducer (FSAT) for structural health monitoring for impacts and leaks in aerospace structures. FSATs will be demonstrated both in the laboratory and on relevant NASA structure. Testing would be performed on both simple and complex parts. M ...

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 ...

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 ...

Shock-wave/boundary-layer interactions (SWBLI) pose challenges to aeronautical engineers because they create regions of adverse pressure gradients as a result of the discontinuous change in conditions across the shock. This shock-induced pressure gradient is a common factor for both flow separation in supersonic inlets and high stagnation pressure losses on transonic wings, factors which are know ...

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 ...

SVT Associates proposes an innovative digital alloy technique to extend the cutoff wavelength of InAsSb beyond 5 um, a wider band gap InAlAsSb layer inserted into depletion region to suppress dark current, and atomic layer deposition technique to coat radiation-hard material AlN on InAsSb detectors grown on GaSb substrate. This digital alloy InAsSb material system is capable of infrared detection ...

This proposal is directed toward the development of innovative high-efficiency UV photocathodes based on the wide bandgap III-nitride semiconductors for reliable operation at high temperature and high radiation environments for future NASA missions near the Sun and in deep atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter. The proposed work includes the incorporation of these photocathodes on Al2O3-based high-tem ...