Award Data

Optical cryocoolers, which are compact and produce no vibrations, are ideal for many electronics and sensor applications. In particular, some advanced metrology systems require cooling to around 124 K, the temperature at which the coefficient of thermal expansion for crystalline silicon goes through a null point. Currently, the dominant solid-state cooling technology is thermoelectric cooling, whi ...

To reach the end user, oil and gas production at the wellhead must be transmitted through the country and distributed to a wide range of customers. This logistical system requires natural gas gathering lines, processing facilities, product storage tanks and lots of other equipment. What results is air pollution caused by industry losses during these operations and the use of continuous or intermit ...

Large populations of interacting agents or swarms, are common throughout nature and society and, increasingly, in mechanical and electronic domains. Although the individual agents in such systems are governed by local rules, their collective behavior is often well-orchestrated to solve complex tasks, whether fighting disease, navigating through space to find resources, or to manage social interact ...

There continues to be a need for low cost production and shipment of fuel-grade ethanol from agricultural sources. Ethanol from agricultural sources has many advantages including developing fuel independence and significantly reducing greenhouse gases. Also, bio-ethanol has significant value as an oxygenated and octane improver. Although ethanol from agricultural sources has many advantages, th ...

New pollution control technologies are needed for small oil- and coal-fired industrial boiler located throughout the United States. Although each unit is relatively small, the vast number of these units creates a significant air pollution source, especially in heavily populated areas, that emits particulate matter (PM) and other air pollutants. In the EPA boiler MACT regulations, it was estimate ...

There is growing concern about the particulate pollution emitted by outdoor wood-fired boilers (0WBs) and their related health effects. These systems are also referred to as outdoor wood-fired hydronic heaters or outdoor wood-fired furnaces. There are currently over 500,000 OWBs installed, primarily in the northern US. During the Phase I SBIR project, a catalytic combustor system that can be retro ...

In this SBIR effort we will design (Phase I) and demonstrate (Phase II) an integrated silicon electronic-photonic upconversion receiver that when used with our photonic backend will allow for a highly sensitive, real-time, and economical millimeter wave (mmW) imaging system. The development of this chip leverages recent progress in CMOS and SiGe HBT high speed analog circuit design and integrates ...

This Phase I SBIR project will examine methods to make maps of magnetic fields with both high spatial resolution and high sensitivity. The sensing element will be an NV doped diamond. Magnetic fields will be measured by electron spin resonance. The Phase I work will show that diffraction limited images can be obtained over a relatively wide field of view and will examine methods to enhance the sig ...

In this Phase II SBIR effort we will dramatically reduce the size, weight, and power requirements of a passive millimeter wave imaging system based on optical upconversion. To this end, we will integrate custom silicon-germanium low noise amplifiers that have been designed to efficiently couple with our high performance lithium niobate upconversion modules. In Phase I we analyzed the design requ ...

Caldera Pharmaceuticals proposes to develop a highly metal-selective system to maintain iron concentrations in the body at optimal levels to prevent infections. The system will control iron without the loss of other essential micronutrients; loss of micronutrients is the cause of toxicity in most chelation systems. Metal selectivity and the corresponding safety for use is the key difference betwee ...