Award Data

CdTe cells have excellent potential for use as top cells in multijunction (tandem) thin-film solar cell structures, but their use is limited by the lack of high performance transparent back contacts to the CdTe. This project will build 1) on recent advances by the Heben group at the University of Toledo in designing carbon nanotube structures for transparent solar cell contacts and 2) on advances ...

NOVA Scientific, Inc., teamed with the Electronics Group of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, proposes to construct very large area Microchannel Plate neutron detectors. The applications of these much larger format detectors will serve an exceptionally broad range of government agencies from neutron scattering detectors for DOE to nuclear material panel detectors for NNSA, and ultimately to nuclear m ...

Under this STTR Imaging Systems Technology (IST) will apply novel Plasma-shell technology and expertise with gas plasma systems to shield and protect BMDS Radar. Plasma-shells are tiny hollow gas encapsulating shells. When energy is applied across the shell, the gas inside ionizes into a plasma. Theory of plasma-electromagnetic (EM) field interaction shows that, under appropriate conditions, pl ...

In order to provide the required simulation frame rates we propose to decouple the incident flux calculations from a simple thermal response model. We propose to develop a table-lookup methodology based on high fidelity precomputed environmental and eventually aerothermal fluxes which can be draw in real time to drive the thermal response model. A simple 1-D thermal calculation based on an analyt ...

Mercury Cadmium Telluride (MCT) has been described as one of the most technologically significant semiconductor materials and is the most widely used material for long wave infrared (LWIR) imaging. The current challenge is to produce MCT over large focal plane array size at low cost and high reliability without compromising sensitivity or noise performance. MCT on silicon substrates is highly attr ...

A major problem that exists with Nd2Fe14B permanent magnets is the high cost of fabricating complex shaped isotropic magnets. The fabrication of conventional high performance Nd2Fe14B magnetic materials involves complicated multi-step processes, such as melting, casting, homogenization, crushing, milling, magnetic alignment, pressing, sintering, and annealing. The Controlled Atmosphere Plasma Spra ...

The removal of pollutant metal ions from water using phytoremediation must be monitored to determine the effectiveness of the process. In particular, a rapid, low cost, in situ method for monitoring metal concentrations in both polluted water and plants is needed to provide the operator of a continuous phytoremediation water purification system with the information required to rotate and replace ...

Localized corrosion due to the failure of a thin protective film often limits the service life of many widely used engineering materials. Mechanistic understanding of passive film breakdown and localized corrosion is limited in large part because of difficulties in measuring the local environment of these small-length scale processes. This project will develop and apply optical-fiber-based chemi ...

Improvement in techniques for measuring forest canopy structure and aboveground biomass is needed for the advancement for carbon sequestration monitoring and prediction. This project will develop methods for measuring the three dimensional (3-D) canopy structure with a commercially available scanning laser instrument. The methods will allow for the estimation of the amount and spatial distributi ...

This STTR Phase I Program will test a processing scheme for fabricating a polymer-based nanocomposite material with significant electrical conductivity for electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding of electronic components and signal wires. The highconductivity of the nanocomposite material is introduced by a nanophase inclusion of a class of cost-effective vapor-grown carbon nanotubes. In th ...