Award Data

A design for a long-wave IR integrated dewar assembly that includes a lens in place of a window, and the associated, deterministic alignment processes, fixtures and instrumentation will be developed. Including a lens, instead of a window, in a dewar provides additional optical design freedom that makes it possible to reduce the length and weight of a sensor optical system. Size and weight are cr ...

A low-cost fiber-based octave-spanning frequency comb system operating in the mid-IR region is proposed, which is based on femtosecond-Tm-fiber-laser-pumped supercontinuum generation in a mid-IR-transmitting dispersion-engineered fiber. An all-fiber femtosecond mode-locked Tm-doped fiber laser at 2 micron will be used as a seed source for mid-IR supercontinuum generation. A femtosecond soliton fib ...

High energy laser can provide a tremendous benefit to the army for area protection against rockets, artillery, and mortars (RAM). There is concern about high energy laser systems potentially causing collateral eye damage due to scattering off of target surfaces. We propose to develop innovative high efficient high power 2.1 micron fiber laser that is scalable to power levels of greater than 10kW. ...

An approach to make a long endurance UAV with an 18 hour endurance and large payload will be developed based on an existing, fielded capability present operationally deployed.  The system will be built from COTS equipment minimizing cost and allowing for rapid maintenance and upgrading of the system as technology develops.  The system will be fully autonomous through launch, mission flight and r ...

This proposal will provide immediate decision support data, enabling appropriate and cost effective responses (shut down vs. continue) for training exercises/facilities. Specifically, the DoD requires the ability to “train as we fight and fight as we train”, however training is severely limited by visible emissions compliance in the current regulatory environment. Regulated facilities will hav ...

In this proposal, AlphaSense, Inc. (AI) and the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) detail the development of a novel noninvasive microwave sensor to quantify the DoS in marine aluminum alloys. The key innovations of this proposal include the following: a) DoS quantifications based on the correlation between the surface resistivity with the microstructures of the aluminum alloys, b) measurements o ...

In this proposal, Alphasense, Inc. details the development of a novel microwave NDE sensor for defect inspections in silicon nitride bearing balls. The key innovations of this proposal include the following: a) the use of the spherical bearing ball as a dielectric resonator, thus enabling us to correlate the resonance characteristics of the bearing ball with various defects; b) the measurements in ...

In this proposal, AlphaSense, Inc. proposes to develop an innovative real time probe for online monitoring of plastic bonded explosive manufacturing process. Key innovations of the proposed sensor probe include: a) the use of a white light interferometer (WLI) to form real time images of the particles for accurate particle size measurements, and b) the use of quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) base ...

The is an effort to increase radiation hardness/survivability of microelectronics through innovation of production processes and capabilities by establishing an economically viable low-volume sub-65nm rad-hard foundry CMOS capability based on Digital Beam Processing (DBP) technology. American Semiconductor (ASI) and Digibeam Corporation (DBC) propose a collaboration to evaluate sub-65nm radiation- ...

Lasers based upon rod architectures offer a simple and rugged method for amplifying an Ultra-Short Pulse (USP) duration laser pulse at moderate powers. When paired with a chirped pulse amplifier (CPA) chain, greater system flexibility and capabilities are realized. This proposal provides solutions to overcome the technical challenges when combining the two techniques in high repetition rate opera ...