Award Data

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to develop micro-fabricated diamond Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) pad conditioners as a replacement of traditional grit-based conditioners for semiconductor and optical polishing. This project will utilize Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) based ultrananocrystalline diamond technologies to create a narrowly size-distributed a ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will result in an efficient and scalable method for design and formal verification of Chip-Multi-Threaded multicore processors, where the individual cores have hardware support for multi-threading. This method will be developed and optimized on the OpenSPARC T2 processor, a publicly available version of the Sun UltraSPARC T2?the indust ...

This small business innovation research Phase I project explores novel wireless antenna technologies based on metamaterial volumetric folded antennas structures. The approach is to compress, twist, and fragment metal strips or discs in a multi-layer structure to form self-tuned, bandwidth optimized, and miniaturized antennas. The design methodology of engineering the coupled-line common and dif ...

The objective of this project is to evaluate the feasibility of using some newly discovered materials, water-stable metal-organic frameworks (MOF), as filters for pollutants common in indoor air. By way of background, recent Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-supported work from Professor Masel’s laboratory has shown that a new class of water-stable MOFs shows unprecedented adsorp ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II research project seeks to determine the feasibility and effectiveness of a Web-based software that provides depression treatment for Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. A recent Pentagon study concluded that returning Iraqi and Afghanistan veterans are currently suffering from "daunting and growing mental health problems" with nearl ...

This SBIR Phase I project will develop a more durable high-temperature solid oxide electrochemical cell that can be used to electrolyze carbon dioxide and water into hydrogen and carbon monoxide for the further production of liquid fuels. The research will be focused on the analyses of the degradation mechanisms and stability of high temperature electrodes. The technology can be used to sequestr ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to develop an innovative microwave surface-wave plasma source for low-cost, large-area, high-throughput conformal thin-film growth. A scalable architecture will be designed to generate high-pressure, low-temperature, narrow-gap, high-density, and damage-free microwave plasmas without the need for external magnetic fields. This p ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will investigate the ability of prompt gamma neutron analysis (PGNA) techniques to provide in situ subsurface (0-48 inches) localized (

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is poised to introduce superior electrolytes to the lithium-ion batteries by using a new class of low-cost, high-performance lithium salts. Currently, the cost of batteries is impacted not only by the high cost of the lithium salts, but also their relatively lower stability that limits battery lifetime. If successful, these electrol ...

This SBIR Phase II project will develop a method to convert the byproduct glycerol to a value-added co-product, xylitol, thereby helping to reduce the costs associated with biodiesel production. The anticipated result is a scalable process capable of converting crude glycerol to xylitol in a single step bioreactor process and a demonstrated method for recovery of the value-added product. The broa ...