Award Data

Silicon wafers oriented on (112) are the preferred substrates for deposition of mercury cadmium telluride layers by molecular beam epitaxy. Surface defects introduced during polishing of the wafers degrade the quality of the epitaxy and the performance of infrared detectors fabricated within these materials. We propose a process for reducing the density of the defects that are inherent in the si ...

Active defects negatively impact the performance of IRFPAs by increasing noise at various levels up to, and including, catastrophic degradation. Evidence indicates that"killer defects"are related to the interaction of open core screw dislocations with impurities that remain after substrate preparation, prior to HgCdTe growth. This impurity diffusion creates a conducting channel that shorts the j ...

For HgCdTe infrared focal plane arrays fabricated on Si substrates, a model has recently been proposed to account for the disparity between the density of failed pixels and the density of dislocations that are present in the HgCdTe junction region. The model distinguishes between active and inactive dislocations and offers a hypothesis that dislocations are active only when they intersect particul ...

To reduce the cost of new hardware development, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is developing fast new computational tools that enable in-the-loop hardware testing. The MDA and contractors have developed high-fidelity scene modeling tools such as the Fast Line-of-sight Imagery for Target and Exhaust-plume Signatures (FLITES) to test optical signature trackers. Currently, these high-speed tools ar ...

The goal of this proposed Phase I effort is to design, construct, and demonstrate a novel laser gain element that can be scaled to operation at power levels in the 10s to 100s of kilowatts in a light-weight, compact, and rugged design while maintaining very high efficiency, high brightness, and good beam quality. This goal will be accomplished through the construction of a composite thin disk gai ...

Applied Technology Associates (ATA) proposes the development of the stable platform for a new Optical Inertial Reference Unit (OIRU) titled the Space Qualified MSTAR Inertial Reference Unit (MIRU-SQ). The components and functions of an OIRU can be easily split between the stable platform and electronics subsystem. Because of the expensive nature of space qualified design, purchasing, and testing ...

The objective of this research and development effort is to encourage the genesis of innovative, high performance avionics systems, subsystems, and components that will enhance the capability of successfully achieving early intercept missile defense in current and future interceptors in a hostile environment. Specifically, we propose to develop a nuclear event detector and circumvention controlle ...

Applied Technology Associates (ATA) proposes the development of the electronics subsystem for a new Optical Inertial Reference Unit (OIRU) titled the Space Qualified MSTAR Inertial Reference Unit (MIRU-SQ). The components and functions of an OIRU can be easily split between the stable platform and electronics subsystem. Because of the expensive nature of space qualified design, purchasing, and t ...

In the proposed effort, SK Infrared LLC, a spin-off from the Krishna INfrared Detector (KIND) laboratory at the University of New Mexico (www.chtm.unm.edu/kind), in collaboration with Raytheon Vision Systems (RVS) is proposing to develop a dual band based imager using a novel unipolar heterostructure design with Type II InAs/GaSb strained layer superlattice detectors. The dual bands that are chose ...

In the proposed effort, SK Infrared LLC (SKI), a spin-off from the Krishna INfrared Detector (KIND) laboratory at the University of New Mexico (www.chtm.unm.edu/kind), in collaboration with Raytheon Vision Systems (RVS) and Intelligent Epitaxy Inc (Intelliepi) is proposing a systematic study with the following two objectives. (a) Optimization of the epitaxial growth parameters to reduce dark cur ...