Award Data

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 ...

Electric vehicle manufacturers and the Department of Energy want safe and fast charging batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles with significant improvement in specific power. Of particular interest are new low-cost materials that can accept high-power recharging during regenerative braking and are compatible with existing manufacturing infrastructure. The applicant holds an exclusive license t ...

Small and medium-scale rural solar adoption has lagged behind traditional urban and utility-scale solar due to a variety of economic and technical issues. While the overall solar system cost stands at the forefront of these issues, there are other important concerns such as safety, dual-use applications, and the potential loss of agricultural tax exemptions that need to be addressed. A new solutio ...

We propose to develop the know-how necessary to utilize additive manufacturing (AM) to fabricate hardware having the material and structural characteristics needed to meet exacting high-vacuum requirements of scientific R&D. Additive manufacturing (AM) offers the potential to realize the production of monolithic components while significantly reducing investments of resources including time, effor ...

Long-term disposal of nuclear waste continues to be an issue of national and international importance. A 2012 Blue Ribbon Commission report to the Secretary of Energy states, .“..this nation’s failure to come to grips with the nuclear waste issue has already proved damaging and costly and it will be more damaging and more costly the longer it continues….” The proposed thermal salt sealing ...

The U.S. depends on its fleet of nuclear facilities for the clean and reliable generation of electricity. With much uncertainty facing long term, geologic storage facilities, long duration on-site waste storage is being considered. VRC Metal Systems, in collaboration with our academic research partner, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSM&T), and our robotics system developer, Rob ...

Modern heavy-duty and medium-duty compression ignition engines are relatively efficient and power dense but still suffer from relatively high criteria pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, the suite of exhaust after-treatment devices required to meet the current criteria pollutant emissions standards is both complicated and expensive. In some cases the after- treatment system cost r ...

The “sterile insect technique” has been successfully applied for several decades to control or eradicate insect pests that threaten agricultural crops or human health in the U.S. and around the world. Pest insects are carefully bred at industrial-scale facilities, with the pupae irradiated with just enough dose to render the insects sterile but otherwise healthy when they are grown and release ...

There is currently no cost-effective way to accurately measure the forces and accelerations acting on a drill bit in a hard-rock geothermal well and to then transmit that information uphole to the driller in a timeframe that allows its use in optimizing drilling performance. Consequently, drilling tends to be slow and drill bits suffer short lives, so geothermal wells tend to cost much more than o ...

Soiling of PV modules leads to significant loss of energy and revenue, but routine cleaning is also costly. Therefore, there is a need for field-deployed soiling sensors, to enable PV system performance assessment and optimization of cleaning schedules. We propose to continue the development and evaluation of proprietary optical soiling sensor technologies disclosed in U.S. Patent Applications 62/ ...