Award Data

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I program will determine the practicality of increasing the second harmonic (SH) output of frequency doubling devices by at least 5 times current gutput powers. Altos has demonstrated in preliminary experiments have a 2 times to 3 times increase in SH output by creating thermal gradients across the waveguide structures used to frequency double the lase ...

AstroPower proposes to develop a new ultra-thin gallium arsenide solar cell for space applications, that will result in significantly higher performance compared to conventional gallium arsenide and silicon solar cells. This design incorporates a "floating" junction on the front of the ultra-thin solar cell and a collecting junction at the back of the device. This design will significantly decreas ...

We propose exploratory development of new epitaxial growth technologies for low-defect GiN epitaxial structures and surrogate substrates. A significant feature of our approach is epitaxial latval overgrowth for "defect filtering." We present arguments that such epitaxial lateral overgrowth will lead to GaN material of unprecedented quality with respect to defects, stress, and purity. In the Phase ...

The proposed effort focuses on the need for innovative, space realizable, self-contained actuators for precision positioning and vibration isolation. The proposed mechanism is a sealed linear actuator capable of high bandwidth (O-lkHz) control. A design feasibility study will be performed on the use of piezoelectrics in an innovative configuration to provide robust linear actuation for positioning ...

The proposed effort focuses on the need for innovative, space realizable, self-contained solid state flexure mechanism for vibration attenuation/isolation. The proposed mechanism is a sealed linear actuator capable of high bandwidth (0-1 kHz) control. A design feasibility study will be performed on the use of piezoelectrics in an innovative flexure mechanism to provide robust vibration attenuation ...

Recent progress in self-mixing Doppler sensors have proven that measurement performance similar to that obtained with continuous-wave coherent laser radar is feasible, but with at least an order of magnitude less complexity and cost. We believe that extremely simple hardware signal processors can also be built as single chips, or at most a few chips. This points to the possibility of developing hi ...

High-density reconfigurable optical routing interconnect is introduced in this SBIR program for optical signal processing. This structure is based on three key features: 1) Polarization manipulation using 2-D spatial light modulators; 2) polarization complementary geometry; and 3) the throw-away undesired optical energies design. The polarization manipulation provides the basis for "no-moving" par ...

Materials Research Group, Inc. (MRG) proposes the process development of low-temperature fabrication processes for thin film silicon carbide (SiC) infrared (IR) emitter on flexible substrates for thermophotovoltaic (TPV) applications. Optimizing the emitter is critical to an effective TPV system. The outstanding thermal and chemical stability of SiC enable it to operate at high temperatures up to ...

Sensors, capacitors, and conducting features such as resistors and capacitors on circuit boards are produced from metal and ceramic powders 1-12 These powders are manufactured by liquid phase precipitation routes which often start with reduction of metal salts or by solid-state routes where solid reactants are mixed, heated and then milled. The solid-state processing is generally repeated several ...

Optomec Design Company proposes to use Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENSTM), a Rapid Prototyping and Manufacturing (RP&M) technology currently under development at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), as a new method for integrating instrumentation (e.g., embedded sensors) into metal structural components. SNL has demonstrated the ability of the LENSTM technology to produce near net shape stainles ...