Award Data

Thin film multilayers of nanometer scale thickness are fundamental to the future of electronics and communications technologies. Chemical depth profiling by ion etching techniques are critical to the characterization of these structures. A fundamental problem with current ion etching technologies is that typical ion energies (~1k eV to 20 keV) create extensive damage and intermixing of nanometer t ...

Next-generation smart machine tools are currently under research and development. Critical to the success of these tools will be the inclusion of smart sensors. These sensor suites will need to measure physical parameters such as temperature, vibration, pressure and so on. Luna Innovations has extensive experience in developing solar powered wireless systems to transmit sensor data. Luna proposes ...

Magnetooptic Indicator (MOI) garnet films are an important non-destructive tool for imaging magnetic domains in a wide variety of applications from basic research to quality control. To be effectively used they must be 1) optimized for individual applications using interactive feedback from users, 2) standardized to allow comparison of data, 3) improved in quality and process control and 4) made g ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase 1 project proposes to develop a femtosecond laser system optimized for optical clocks and other precision metrology applications. In principle, atomic optical transitions have the potential to provide radically higher-accuracy timekeeping, because of the very high frequency of an optical transition. The problem of counting, or down-counting, the oscill ...

This project will (i) extend and harden the PSL Editor and the Ontology-Driven XSLT Generator (ODXG) tools and (ii) extend the process description syntax (PDS) derived from the PSL for both KIF and XML/RDF formats. In addition, we will extend the PSL metatheoretical framework to support the PDS and the PSL tools by providing PSL extensions to support calendars and activity specialization, and by d ...

We propose to develop a robust framework, called the Process Knowledge Integration and Management Framework (PKIMF), to support the complete lifecycle of enterprise process knowledge that natively use the Process Specification Language (PSL). PKIMF uses a dashboard approach to design, analyze, integrate, exchange, and manage process knowledge. Its features and capabilities include the use of a pro ...

The United States faces a broad range of nuclear threats and technologies are needed to prevent or mitigate nuclear incidents. SMI has invented (patent pending) a near 100 volume percent efficient, real-time, microelectronic self calibrating and directional radiation detector. We can increase detector area to increase broad sensitivity and the number of layers to increase directionality. We herein ...

We propose to compare alternative architectures for phase noise measurement by directly sampling the RF waveform. Out of band modulation and cross correlation will reduce noise. The capabilities of each architecture will be determined using analysis and simulation. The results will be used to determine the feasibility of developing a commercially useful measurement instrument. If the results are p ...

The near chiral purity of the biosphere leads to a vast array of chiro-specific physiological responses. This chiro-specificity, in turn, gives rise to the need for the manufacturing of enantiomerically pure chiral chemicals, such as pesticides, pharmaceuticals, food additives, pigments, etc. Critical to the efficacy of both chiro-specific biology and chiro-synthesis/separation are the interfacial ...

We will develop a compact external cavity stabilization system, which will employ independent electro-optic control over the optical path length of the cavity and a wavelength-selective element. The system should be able to cover a 30 nm range and give mode-hop-free tuning over 20 nm intervals. The design of the feedback system will be compatible with any commercially available laser diode from 63 ...