Award Data

At the present time, carbon fiber tanks are very expensive, with the high pressure vessel industry standard Toray T700 carbon fiber costing between $20 and $50 per kilogram alone. At this high price, the carbon fiber currently comprises as much as 75% of the overall tank cost and is a major roadblock on the path to commercialization. To make hydrogen fuel cells in early market and light-duty vehic ...

Samarium-153 (153Sm) has ideal nuclear properties for a variety of therapeutic applications; however, it is only available in low specific activity (radioactivity/weight) form. While large quantities can be made by the 152Sm(n,)153Sm reaction in a medium flux reactor such as at the University of Missouri Research Reactor Center (MURR), typical irradiation parameters result in less th ...

SOFC technology promises to provide an efficient method by which electricity can be generated from coal-derived syngas, biofuels, and natural gas, while increasing energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The large capital costs attributed to the cathode low performance and long-term stability issues are a current limitation of SOFC technologies that must be addressed before commerci ...

Science and engineering depend on evolving ever more complex software, typically coded in C++, to investigate phenomena or design sophisticated products. The rate of delivered value for such software is often limited by its organization, and scientists/engineers spend significant effort trying to understand the code organization and restructuring the code to enable the next interesting concept o ...

Diffusion barriers used in Nb3Sn wire are currently fabricated by wrapping Ta sheet into a tube with an overlap seam. The result of current practice is non- uniform deformation in the Ta sheet as it thins by wire drawing because of non-uniform grain size and texture. In addition, a significant portion of the diffusion barrier is twice as thick as need be. The overlap is wasteful of Ta and produc ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project proposes to commercialize liquid submersion cooling for computer servers. Liquid submersion cooling involves submersion of heat-generating components in a non-electrically-conductive liquid, replacing air as the heat transfer medium. Liquid is significantly better than air to transfer heat, but historically has required cost-prohibitive capi ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project proposes to develop a low cost packaged near-infrared on-chip silicon absorption spectrometer for simultaneous and specific detection of multiple volatile organic compounds in water (ground water, waste water and drinking water). In phase I, the volatile organic compound xylene was successfully detected in water at 100 parts per billi ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project aims to develop a single wafer processing clean tool for semiconductor wafer cleaning at all stages of wafer processing. The method relies on using acoustically controlled micro-cavitation to remove on-wafer particles. This is a chemical-free cleaning method, using ultra-pure water as the only processing fluid. During cleaning the par ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project aims to further develop ATX-Red, an in vivo imaging agent that becomes fluorescent in the presence of the enzyme autotaxin. Autotaxin and its product LPA are involved in numerous biological functions that generally involve cell movement, and their dysregulation is associated with many diseases including cancer, fibroses, cardiovascula ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will continue the development, validation, and full-scale testing of a new patent-pending nanoparticle-reinforced composite product for the repair and rehabilitation of piping and other civil infrastructure systems. The overarching goal of the research is to develop and demonstrate a composite system that can be used to repair pipes w ...