Award Data

Aerosol particles have important impacts on visibility, acid deposition, human health, and climate. A large fraction of the anthropogenic aerosol is generated from energy-related activities known to contribute a significant fraction of ambient aerosol mass in many locations. Black carbon, formed in combustion processes, is believed to have a particularly strong influence on the earth¿s climate o ...

Methane (CH4) is the second most important atmospheric greenhouse gas after CO2, yet its global sources and sinks are still inadequately characterized. Monitoring the isotopic composition of atmospheric methane is one of the most promising approaches to closing the methane budget. Recent claims that plants may account for a substantial fraction of atmospheric methane have lead to an increased e ...

With the ever-increasing number of human disease models, particularly models in smaller animals, high-resolution emission/transmission tomography techniques have become extremely important. The barriers to using existing modalities in studies of laboratory animals have traditionally been poor spatial resolu­tion, low sensitivity, and high cost. Although detector technologies have improved signi ...

Nuclear physics investigations require photodetectors that operate in harsh conditions (e.g., temperatures of 5 K and below, and magnetic fields greater than 1 T); yet existing methods of photodetection cannot provide the needed quality of data at a reasonable cost. This project will develop a photodetector that will tolerate these conditions and can be made in a commercially available, low-cost ...

Inorganic scintillation crystals are a very important element of the current and the next generation experiments in nuclear and particle physics. Performance of the nuclear physics detection systems is often limited by the properties of scintillators available for neutron and gamma ray detection. This project will investigate new scintillator materials that provide excellent light yield for neutr ...

Cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detectors have the potential to be a powerful and versatile tool in the tracking and control of nuclear materials. However, despite well over a decade of development, yield of spectrometer grade material remains low. This project will investigate the traveling heater method (THM) as an alternative method for growing CZT. The Phase I project was aimed at demonstrating ...

X-ray detector arrays with high energy resolution, high sensitivity and high count-rate performance are required for synchrotron beamline studies. However, in many studies conducted with synchrotron beamlines, the characteristics of available X-ray detectors limit the overall system performance. This project will investigate a novel low-capacitance design for high purity silicon detector arrays ...

Microfluidic chips, fabricated from low cost polymers, are a promising, emerging technology for synthesis and study of new molecular imaging probes. These chips can contain a variety of microcircuitry and microwells, and are capable of manipulating nanoliter samples of reagents and solvents. The microfluidic chips have been designed for a multitude of applications, such as cell incubation and rad ...

Scintillation detectors, consisting of inorganic scintillation crystals coupled to photomultipliers, are an important element of medical imaging applications such as positron emission tomography (PET). Performance as well as cost of these systems is limited by the properties of the scintillation detectors available at present. The goal of this project is to investigate a new class of scintillation ...

A high-brightness elliptic electron or positron beam is a novel device that has wide applications in high energy accelerators. In addition to the high-energy accelerator applications, high-brightness elliptic charged-particle (electron, muon, proton, antiproton, and ion) beams have wide applications in other accelerators for nuclear physics research and high-energy density physics research. The Ph ...