Award Data

X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy is a widely used and extremely sensitive analytical technique for qualitative as well as quantitative chemical analysis. Superconducting Transition Edge Sensor (TES) microcalorimeter detectors have now been developed that achieve an energy resolution of 2 eV (full width at half maximum) for 1.5 keV X-rays, which is sufficient to enable the measurement of the small s ...

The NIST patented six-degree of freedom micropositioner technology associated with this subtopic has been identified by E M Optomechanical, Inc. (EMOM) as a technology that could be incorporated into the company¿s long-working distance interference microscopes. A key element in these microscopes is a piezo-actuator device, installed in a manual pitch/yaw mount, which translates a small flat mirro ...

Modern supercontinuum (SC) light sources are generated by non-linear interactions between ultrashort laser pulses and optical fibers. These light sources have high brightness and are spatially coherent. Output in near-ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelength ranges has been demonstrated. SC wavelength ranges are constrained by the transmission and dispersion properties of the fibers. Previously, ou ...

Southwest Sciences¿ Phase 2 SBIR project will lead to development of residential fire sensing systems based on recently developed, low cost temperature and optical imaging sensors combined with newly introduced highly miniaturized, micropower CO sensors. Sensor modules will be part of a low power wireless network. Each module will be about ½ the size of a business card, a few mm thick, and w ...

A key factor of international efforts to identify and suppress the supply of and demand for nuclear materials, and thereby to deter potential traffickers, is the ability to accurately identify contradicted material and ultimately to trace it back to its origin. Alpha particle spectroscopy is widely used in nuclear forensics to assay trace quantities of sensitive nuclear materials, but the limited ...

The nuclear weapons community has traditionally focused on the next generation or level of weapon capability complimented by gathering and analysis of actual test data. Now, with the cessation of actual weapons testing, there is an increased need to use the actual test data in modeling techniques to better understand the phenomenology and potential effects of nuclear weapons. The first phase of ...

Turbulence of gas flows by its very nature is one of the most difficult things to model and measure. We propose to develop a new way of measuring the turbulence and to compare these measurements to predictions using the k-epsilon model. Typical measurements, in the past, use smoke, Schlierin or shadow graph techniques to visually infer turbulence characteristics. These features are either motio ...

Mission Research Corporation proposes the development of a unique FPGA (field programmable gate array) for applications in space and other military and civilian environments requiring the versatility of reconfigurability with retention of the configuration in an unpowered state. The FPGA will be capable of being configured once and retaining that configuration for a minimum of 10 years even with ...

We propose, in Phase I and Phase II, to build an X-ray simulator capable of easy transportation between sites which can be built for a low cost (

CURRENT ATTEMPTS TO USE THE PLASMA OPENING SWITCH (POS) FOR DECADE HAVE NOT YET BEEN ENTIRELY SUCCESSFUL DUE TO THE APPARENT INABILITY OF THE SWITCH TO OPEN EFFICIENTLY TO A HIGH-IMPEDENCE LOAD. RESEARCH DIRECTED TOWARD IMPROVING THE PERFORMANCE OF THE POS IN THE LONG-CONDUCTION TIME REGIME HAS BEEN FRUSTRATED BY THE INABILITY OF COMPUTATIONAL TOOLS TO OPERATE IN THE PARAMETER REGIMES OF INTEREST ...