Award Data

"Austral Engineering and Software, Inc. proposes continued development of a software application for design criteria management in multiobjective optimization-guided design of sequences of materials proceses. This effort integraesstate-of-the-art-milti-objective optimization algorithms and visualization techniques with apropriate systems, materials, process and cost models, and simulation tools in ...

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project will develop the technology necessary to produce low-power, low-noise VLSI amplifiers for large-scale neural recording applications. Although there are many emerging multi-electrode arrays for neuroscience and neuroprosthetic recording applications, these arrays are practically limited by wiring densities and percutaneous connections. ...

Intellectual Merit: This STTR project will develop novel engineered Clostridia strains for fermentation to economically produce butanol as a biofuel from sugars derived from starchy and lignocellulosic biomass. Butanol is an important industrial solvent and potentially a better transportation fuel than ethanol. Recent rising oil prices and limited petroleum resources have generated high interest i ...

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project aims to apply the unique property of high-speed jets to adhere to nearby curved surfaces, with a turning radius much larger than the size of the jet - the so-called COANDA effect. The proposed research aims to take advantage of this effect to manipulate thermal spray jet stream and vector the stream such that the hot thermal gas stream ...

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project will investigate the technical and commercial feasibility of coating metal foils with a solid sorbent so that they act as a desulfurizing component for pre-treatment of sulfur-laden liquid fuels. The coated foils will be inserted into a small heat exchanger that acts as a platform unit for conversion of liquid fuels to hydrogen for fue ...

"Ceramic polymers or "geopolymers" are amorphous to semi-crystalline three dimensional alumino-silicate materials resulting from geochemistry. "Geopolymerisation" is the chemical reaction between various aluminosilicate oxides (Al+3 in Iv, V, or Vi foldcoordination) with silicates under highly alkaline conditions, yielding polymeric Si-O-Al-O bonds (HUA & VanDeventer 1999). Geopolymers form co-p ...

"Continuous fiber-reinforced ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) are attractive candidate materials for structural components in military/commercial airframe or engine/turbine components due to their high-temperature mechanical properties. However, currentCMCs have two major limitations that have prevented replacement of current materials, namely (1) very high processing/materials costs and (2) insu ...

This STTR Phase I project is designed to develop a novel process for fabricating a nano-grained ceramic material for infrared windows. The proposed STTR builds upon our previous Phase I (Navy) SBIR experience to minimize risks and maximize the likelihood of success. This proposed work will utilize an innovative method to fabricate nanocrystalline alumina infrared window materials with significantl ...

"The quality of semiconductor thin-film grown by vapor phase epitaxy is strongly dependent on the growth conditions. The diffusion of adatoms on the flat surface is largely responsible for the quality of the film. The diffusion rate is directly related tothe bond energy of adatoms. Recent experiments have demonstrated that application of an external field can lead to a change in the microstruct ...

In this STTR project, an efficient and high-fidelity computational module to predict non-gray radiative transfer will be developed and validated. The proposed hybrid approach to solve the radiative transport equation (RTE) is a combination of the spherical harmonics (PN) method and the Monte-Carlo method. Non-gray gases will be treated using the full spectrum correlated k-distribution (FSCK) metho ...