Award Data

Liquid-metal coolants are one of the most promising solutions for the challenges of advanced high temperature nuclear reactor systems.They optimize heat transfer, neutronics, safety, and compactness of the reactor systems.Molten lead and lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) are the primary coolant candidates due to their unique thermo-mechanical and neutronics properties.However, they are highly corrosive ...

Indium tin oxide (ITO) films are currently the most widely used transparent conductor in optoelectronic applications. However, ITO suffers from several major technological and economic limitations for large area applications such as inadequate performance, high cost, and brittleness. The primary objective of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I/Phase II project is to develop the ...

The DOE Office of Nuclear Physics (NP) seeks innovations that will advance our nation’s capability to perform nuclear physics research, and more specifically to improve DOE Nuclear Physics (NP) Facilities and the wider NP community experimental programs. For example, data acquisition (DAQ) for the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), currently under construction, will require considerable spe ...

The composition of atmospheric particulate matter (“aerosols”) strongly influences health and environmental impacts, but there exist few time-resolved, long-term records of particle-phase chemical composition due to lack of appropriate monitoring tools. Needed is an instrument that is robust, easy-to-operate, with automated calibrations and data reduction, to provide operationally-inexpensive ...

Cost-effective and power-efficient radiation tolerant semiconductors are needed in various harsh environments, such as particle detectors, communication satellites, high-altitude avionics and medical imagining equipment. These include amplifiers, voltage regulators, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and digital logic circuitry. However, radiation-tolerant high-speed ADCs currently cost more than ...

There are an estimated 1.7 million oil and gas wells in the United States, 771,000 of these are considered marginal producers. Combined they make up 11.3% of the US oil production and 8.3% of the US gas production. In that last 10 years, over 131,000 of these oil wells and 48,000 gas wells have been plugged and abandoned. Most of these wells suffer from paraffin plugging problems. The only way to ...

Nanotechnology has failed to live up to its promise of exploiting the emerging properties at the nanoscale because of the lack of manufacturing precision thus denying society many energy saving materials and applications. There is therefore a strong need to realize the promise of complex nanosystems by developing atomically precise manufacturing (APM). This project targets a key component of an At ...

Direct Internal Reforming Solid Oxide Fuel Cells require an anode material with good catalytic reforming and electrochemical reactivity. Although the current state-of-the-art solid oxide fuel cell anode consisting of nickel and yttrium-stabilized zirconia (Ni-YSZ) has excellent catalytic properties and stability for the H2 oxidation at the usual operation conditions, the use of Ni-YSZ anode with c ...

Recently, the Generation IV International Forum has established a set of nuclear reactors (advanced nuclear reactors), with main objectives to improve overall reactor safety, efficiency, sustainability, and proliferation resistance for economically viable nuclear energy. These advanced reactor technologies rely on novel fuels and materials that are resistant to radiation damage and corrosive envir ...

Under the Department of Energy’s Ground-based Nuclear Detonation Research and Development (GNDD R&D) Program, the Air Force Technical Application’s Center (AFTAC) monitors for nuclear explosions through high altitude whole-air gas sampling using compressors to inject air into a high-flow air stream or store in a high-pressure vessel. The existing compressors have proven reliability issues with ...