Award Data

High performance, high brightness photocathodes are a critical enabling technology for ultrafast, high brightness DOE electron accelerators, such as the X-ray free electron laser FEL) at SLAC and MaRIE planned for Los Alamos National Laboratory, and for high-resolution electron microscopes at DOE material research centers. A novel approach to manufacturing nitride semiconductor materials will be d ...

Minirhizotron image collection has benefited from technological advances in camera design and operation, bulk data storage, and remote camera control enabling high-volume image collection. The technology used in processing these minirhizotron images into useful data metrics has not progressed at the same pace. Individual images are often manually interpreted, and researchers are accumulating image ...

Our proposal addresses the need expressed in subtopic 26.a to measure vertically resolved soil moisture distributions. While soil moisture content is a key state variable in subsurface hydrobiogeochemical processes, spatially resolved soil moisture flux is an equally important process variable. We propose to develop an intelligent sensor that will use machine learning to infer vertically resolved ...

The capital cost and power requirements for current commercial oxygen separation processes are generally determined by the amount of oxygen required. For large-scale oxygen production, standard cryogenic air separation technologies offer the lowest production cost and energy requirements for oxygen. At oxygen production levels of less 500 tons/day TPD), the capital cost and energy penalty for cryo ...

The quantification of in situ fine root phenotypes is an important task in the comprehensive study of natural and agricultural environments and critical to under- standing how plants respond to various changes in those environments, especially as those changes relate to energy and environmental challenges Mini-rhizotron experiments enable nondestructive imaging of in situ root systems, but their a ...

Improving our current ability to measure the shape of x-ray focusing mirrors is necessary to advance our knowledge of the atomic structure of many types of materials, especially for the latest diffraction-limited light sources within the DOE. X-ray studies at DOE national laboratories of the atomic structure of new materials, biological molecules, etc. are limited by the quality of the x-ray spot ...

Energy Futures Group (EFG) has partnered with Vermont State Employees Credit Union (VSECU) and others to develop a low-cost, innovative approach to incorporate actionable energy information into the mortgage process and finance energy improvements in existing homes. Currently, energy is virtually invisible in the residential mortgage market, home buyers rarely know their expected energy costs, app ...

Direct Air Capture (DAC) of CO2 is a potentially scalable negative CO2 emissions technology. Beyond negative emissions, DAC technologies can be placed ubiquitously to utilize CO2 for wide variety of applications, ranging from CO2 utilization for value-added products, to enhanced oil recovery, to geological sequestration without expensive pipelines. Current estimates for DAC suggest that it can cos ...

Advancement of the performance and reliability of power electronics utilizing wide bandgap materials has been identified as a key technical target by the US DRIVE partnership to meet 2025 roadmap targets established by the Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO). While SiC-based technology has a significant head-start over GaN in terms of its technical maturity and is being ramp ...

The US Air Force seeks new technologies to improve the fragmentation performance of legacy munitions. Traditional approaches for controlled fragmentation consist of notches or grooves on the order of 1-10 mm to control the fragment size distribution and shape. However, for USAF, new methods are needed that do not significantly alter the surface of the munitions casing to meet flight safety require ...