Award Data

Development of hypersonic aircraft and weapon systems has become a critical focus for the Department of Defense to maintain global strike and projection of force capabilities. Despite decades of research, traditional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods are either incapable of adequately predicting complex features in hypersonic flows or too expensive to be of practical use for vehicle desig ...

Through this MDA Phase I STTR program, NanoSonic shall work with the high energy laboratory at Penn State and with input from a major US integrator of hypersonic vehicles to develop improved high temperature radome materials for uncooled aerodynamic reentry and hypersonic vehicles. Through prior work, NanoSonic has developed and demonstrated high temperature materials with good thermal insulating ...

NanoSonic will work with Penn State to develop inexpensive automated manufacturing processes for the production of ceramic matrix composite thermal protective system materials with high temperature thermal performance and high thermal insulation propertiesWe will fabricate materials using automated robotic production methods, and perform testing, including high energy irradiation at Penn State’s ...

The innovation proposed here is a novel carbon-carbon composite (CCC) manufacturing method based on polymer infusion and polymerization (PIP) using a novel precursor polymer with exceptionally high char yields. This results in a material that has the promise of excellent quality and mechanical properties, while offering the breakthrough advantages of (1) greatly reduced or eliminated need for back ...

This Phase II work will develop a methodology for radiation hardness testing of microelectronics. This methodology includes understanding of device physics and irradiation sources, as well as utilization of irradiation facilities and dosimetry of irradiated microelectronics. The methodology necessarily incorporates design of testing procedures, development of experimental setups including microele ...

In Phase II, the Attollo team proposes to investigate the growth and fabrication techniques of LWIR SLS and associated variants to meet the target objectives. Our plan is to push the envelope further by increasing the absorption coefficient, improving the material quality and carrier lifetime, and reducing any surface leakage contribution from detector fabrication. At the end of Phase II, we expec ...

Obscurants are materials that absorb, scatter, or emit radiation in the visible, infrared (IR), or millimeter wavelength regions of the electromagnetic spectrum to reduce the transmission of radiation. For military applications, this reduction of transmitted radiation interrupts the line of sight between the target and observer to provide a key defensive tool to protect US warfighters from detecti ...

Optical power beaming systems have the potential to revolutionize energy supply for airborne military platforms, allowing networks of unmanned aircraft to operate aloft indefinitely. To ensure safe and efficient optical power transfer, receiving optics must be designed to provide rigorous photon containment. Stray reflections and scattered light must be minimized in order to ensure safety for pers ...

DARPA is interested in technologies which enable safe optical power beaming systems.  High-efficiency wireless power transmission by a directed optical beam will greatly enhance military capabilities by enabling a multi-node wireless energy web.  We are developing high efficiency semiconductor lasers at 1550 nm which are directly suitable for power beaming.  Our laser array technology is at an ...

Food irradiation technology has attracted more attention in the past decade given that it can provide a sustainable solution on how to address pathogen contamination in food. X-ray irradiation has several advantages compared to other irradiation technologies including superior penetrating quality compared to electron beams, and considerably larger dose rate compared to gamma rays. However, the low ...