Award Data

GaN-based devices are the basis of a variety of modern electronics applications, especially in optoelectronics and high-frequency / high-power electronics. These devices are based on epitaxial films grown on single-crystal wafers. The single-crystal wafer substrates are limiting because of their size, expense, mechanical properties and availability. If one could make GaN-based devices over large a ...

Innovative, fast, ultraprecise and affordable metrology instruments are needed to ensure that grazing incidence optics can meet emerging requirements for DOE Basic Energy Sciences (BES) synchrotron and FEL x-ray light sources. Currently, there is not a suitable instrument available in the United States that will allow manufacturers to produce such demanding optics. This PH I SBIR will focus on de ...

Mesa Photonics proposes a new method for online diagnostics at x-ray free electron laser facilities. This diagnostic can be fully automated, switching among alignment, jitter measurements, and pulse characterization. In this SBIR project, Mesa Photonics will develop a new diagnostic for measuring the time arrival between optical and x-ray ultrafast pulses. This technology is critical for the dev ...

Stratus and stratocumulus clouds with low drop concentration and large drop diameter are scientifically very important, because this is the regime in which drizzle drops are formed. The formation of drizzle can lead to a rapid modification of the cloud droplet size distribution, which in turn has a strong influence on the cloud & apos;s radiative properties. Because stratus and stratocumulus cl ...

Nitrous oxide is the third most important greenhouse gas (GHG,) with an atmospheric lifetime of ~114 years and a global warming impact ~300 times greater than that of CO2. The main cause of nitrous oxides atmospheric increase is anthropogenic emissions, and over 80% of the current global anthropogenic flux is related to agriculture, including associated land-use change. An accurate assessment of N ...

Isotopic analysis of suspect materials is an effective tool for identifying and characterizing nuclear. Isotope ratios of uranium, plutonium, lithium, and hydrogen are particularly informative for distinguishing fuel for nuclear power plants from weapons-grade material. Existing instrumentation capable of measuring isotope ratios to high precision and accuracy is expensive, bulky, and requires ...

It is extremely important to understand and control the temporal characteristics of electron beams at accelerator photoinjectors. Measuring and setting the electron bunch length is critical to the operation of the accelerator, and can ultimately determine if physics experiments at user-based accelerators can be successfully performed. Many parameters affect the temporal characteristics of electro ...

Electric vehicles, including hybrids in the nearer term, are the principal transportation technology by which the United States can become independent of foreign oil, can become energy independent overall, and can effect control over greenhouse emissions. For this to become reality, electric vehicle costs need to come down and performance needs to improve. For electric vehicle motors, the goals ...

ScienceTomorrow in collaboration with Dr. David C Joy, at the University of Tennessee Research is proposed to fabricate direct digital Quantitative Secondary Electron Detectors (QSED) for scanning electron microscopes (SEMs). If successful, commercial versions of the QSED would transform the SEM/STEM into a quantitative, metrological tool with enhanced capabilities that, in turn, would broaden re ...

Monitoring the root systems of plants is essential to improving models of crop productivity, soil carbon sequestration and biogeochemical cycling. Fine roots (considered to be smaller than 1-2 mm in diameter) are the dominant component of this system, with roots & lt;0.2 mm in diameter often representing 50% to 95% of total root length. The plasticity and dynamism of fine ...