Award Data

Statement of Problem: The US DOE has set a goal to advance photovoltaics (PV) technology to reach installed costs of less than $1/Watt. This requires module costs below $0.50/ Watt. Thin film PV provides the lowest documented production cost per watt ($0.67) of any PV technology. Module reliability has a direct impact on the levalized cost of energy (LCOE), or the cost of the energy produced by ...

Understanding the genomic basis of economically important plants for growth time, crop yield, responses to drought and disease resistance is of critical importance to sustaining and improving food supplies for humans and livestock, as well as insuring sufficient raw material availability for industries that depend on plant materials, such as biofuel manufacture. Current computational methods for a ...

Methods for interconversion between cell types (cellular reprogramming) are currently discovered through resource intensive trial and error. Experiments may test a multitude of transcription factors to identify correct combinations that influence cell fate. In addition, reprogramming approaches commonly use stem cell intermediates such as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which are generated ...

Quantifying atmospheric aerosol, clouds and precipitation processes are critical needs for understanding and interpreting Earth’s changing energy budget, is a DOE objective, and is of broader benefit to the public. Specifically, the formation of ice in the atmosphere depends on the nature and abundance of ice nucleating particles, and has major implications for precipitation and cloud interactio ...

The objective of this proposal is to examine the feasibility of defining and measuring key dimensions of an urban system to include its essential functions and networks, and whether they can be modelled in a computational framework for assessing robustness and resilience of DUTs (and their tipping points) under conditions of volatility and stress. This proposal will conduct a comprehensive review ...

Vast amounts of impaired waters are produced in gas and oil wells. Energy-efficient desalination systems are needed to treat these waters to produce fresh water and concentrated brines. Mineral recovery systems can also yield valuable critical materials as byproducts. Savengy Technologies and University of Central Florida (UCF) will develop and commercialize an energy efficient system to treat sha ...

Direct Solar in partnership with Colorado State University's Next Generation PV Center (NGPV) and H. B. Fuller Company will develop a new solar module architecture and manufacturing process optimized for crystalline silicon (c-Si) modules that significantly reduces manufacturing costs and improves reliability. The outcome of this program will be a new c-Si module design, streamlined manufacturing ...

The problem/situation that is being addressed concerns the development of near infrared ultrafast interference coatings(IC) for high average power femtosecond lasers that will meet the specifications of the DoE solicitation: “broad-bandwidth, laser damage threshold of 0.5 J/cm2 (1 ps), engineered using a process that is scalable to large areas.” Advances in compact high gradient laser-driven p ...

The problem being addressed is the development of high intensity ultrashort pulse lasers, in recognition that today’s ultra-high intensity lasers are limited to repetition rates of < 10 Hz. Technical solutions are sought to enable the generation of high energy (joule-level) laser pulses that can be focused to highly relativistic intensity at high repetition rates (100-1000 Hz). The proposed proj ...

Plastics are indispensable materials for the modern life and global economy, but current practices in the generation and disposal of commodity plastics are largely unsustainable and causing severe worldwide plastics pollution and enormous materials' energy and value losses to the economy. In particular, plastics are a material of choice in packaging applications but they are currently designed for ...