Award Data

Silicon wafers oriented on (112) are the preferred substrates for deposition of mercury cadmium telluride layers by molecular beam epitaxy. Surface defects introduced during polishing of the wafers degrade the quality of the epitaxy and the performance of infrared detectors fabricated within these materials. We propose a process for reducing the density of the defects that are inherent in the si ...

Active defects negatively impact the performance of IRFPAs by increasing noise at various levels up to, and including, catastrophic degradation. Evidence indicates that"killer defects"are related to the interaction of open core screw dislocations with impurities that remain after substrate preparation, prior to HgCdTe growth. This impurity diffusion creates a conducting channel that shorts the j ...

For HgCdTe infrared focal plane arrays fabricated on Si substrates, a model has recently been proposed to account for the disparity between the density of failed pixels and the density of dislocations that are present in the HgCdTe junction region. The model distinguishes between active and inactive dislocations and offers a hypothesis that dislocations are active only when they intersect particul ...

Programs such as Airborne Laser and Space-Based Laser are in need of highly mass efficient structural materials to achieve system performance targets. This naturally leads to graphite fiber reinforced polymers for many system components. For someapplications, such as cryogen storage vessels, these materials are subject to micro cracking under little or no structural loading. New materials with ...

We propose to develop a prototype suite of recursive partitioning (RP) methodologies to provide advanced warning of failure, malfunction and/or performance degradation for Airborne Laser Program subsystems in service. Through better monitoring and analysisof the status of its systems, prediction of equipment life remaining can be made and corrective action taken to enhance the availability of the ...

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