Award Data

NanoSD, Inc. with its partners will develop a transparent, nanostructured thermally insulating film that can be applied to existing single-pane windows to reduce heat loss. To produce the nanostructured film, the team will create hollow ceramic or polymer nanobubbles and consolidate them into a dense lattice structure using heat and compression. Because it is mostly air, the resulting nanobubble s ...

Infrared spectroscopy is the most widely used technique for chemical characterization with a worldwide market of over $1B annually. Conventional infrared spectroscopy suffers, however, from fundamental spatial resolution limits that prohibit its application at the nanoscale. This has prevented widespread use of IR spectroscopy in the growing field of nanoscale materials. The atomic force microsc ...

The economical use of hydrogen as a transportation and stationary power fuel remains a long-term DOE objective. Energy storage applications in Europe such as wind capture and improved biogas conversion efficiency are also driving significant interest in hydrogen production from renewable sources. New and efficient catalytic processes for hydrogen generation are therefore needed to achieve produc ...

Density functional theory is used by many researchers funded by the Department of Energy as a method for predicting the behavior of chemicals and materials used in energy applications. However, results of these calculations are often not standardized and, even when they are, expert-level understand of the methods is needed in order to properly perform a simulation. The energy research community a ...

The DOEs & quot;Monitoring Verification and Accounting (MVA) program goal is to confirm permanent storage of CO2 in geologic formations by real-time monitoring should CO2 leak. Remote technologies, effective for atmospheric or above ground CO2 monitoring, are ineffective for subsurface, and it is where leakage can be detected first. By the time leaked CO2 slowly appears on the surface, CO2 may hav ...

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Many important technology challenges today such as the capacity and life time of batteries require new characterization techniques to understand and improve performance. In the STTR Phase II project, novel x-ray microscope techniques and software are developed to be able to image samples in three dimensions and determine chemical composition and function on a microscopic level. As known from ubi ...

The feasibility for fusion as a practical energy source needs to be enhanced significantly by removing some of the restrictions that low-temperature superconductors put on the fusion magnet systems. This can be done by using high-temperature superconductors, allowing for much larger temperature margins, a higher magnet performance and less mechanical degradation during operation. There are curren ...

Ultrasound is a therapeutic modality which has been used clinically for 60 years, but has been limited in practice by the complexity of the technology. Recent research has allowed for the development of a portable, wearable, long duration, low intensity therapeutic ultrasound system. The system is powered by battery, and can be applied by a user to deliver up

A key requirement for microalgae biofuels production is a very low cost harvesting technology. Commercially available solidliquid separation technologies applicable to microalgae, such as chemical coagulation, membrane separations and centrifugation, are too costly for biofuels production or other lowcost microalgae processes, such as wastewater treatment. A low cost harvesting process is bio floc ...