Award Data

Commercial sources of rare earth elements include bastnaesite (La, Ce)FCO3, monazite, (Ce, La, Y, Th)PO4, and xenotime, YPO4. However, the processing of these materials to extract and recover the rare earth elements is challenging and very process intensive. However, there are numerous domestic sources of rare earth elements, from waste materials such as coal fly ash, which could be extracted bene ...

The development of a multi-TeV e+e- linear collider is a key priority set by the P5 panel, which established the long-term strategy of the U.S. HEP program. A Two-Beam Acceleration (TBA) is one of the most promising approaches for this facility due to its potential for achieving high efficiency and the ability to accelerate particles with positive and negative charges. However, there are still cha ...

The monitoring of gaseous exhaust (e,g., NOx, NH3) and particulate matters (PMs) has been critical in the automotive diesel engine combustion emission control, for which various catalytic converters need be operated efficiently and environment-friendly, including diesel oxidation catalysts (DOC), diesel particulate filters (DPF), and selective catalytic reduction (SCR). For instance, in the DPF, t ...

Fiber optic-based sensing devices and systems allow for electromagnetic interference-immune interrogation of temperature and strain distribution within the cryomodule coil winding pack of superconducting magnets. A specific use of fiber sensors is for rapid and redundant quench detection. Novel fiber-optic sensors may also be used for precision measurement of distributed and local temperature and/ ...

To advance a strong and economical biofuels and bioproducts industry, tools are needed for breeding microalgae to improve phenotypes of commercial interest, including biomass yield, culture stability, harvestability, and accumulation of valuable compounds. This project aims to increase biomass feedstock yields by the phototrophic green alga Scenedesmus obliquus by using classical breeding approach ...

To meet performance and cost targets for electric vehicles, substantial improvement is still required in lithium-ion batteries. A low-cost, high-capacity silicon anode will greatly aid in this effort, but current methods for generating functional nano-silicon for anodes use expensive metallurgical, templating, gaseous, or other top-down engineering processes. This project proposes to use the natur ...

Silicon wafers are the single largest cost component within solar photovoltaic modules. To maintain the cost reduction targets outlined in industrial roadmaps, wafer costs need to be significantly reduced. Reducing the cost of wafers requires reducing the kerf-loss and wafer thickness while increasing throughput in tools for processing silicon ingots into wafers. The proposed technology augments t ...

Modern quantum information systems employ optical photons for long distance communication, operating at ambient temperature, between microwave cavities, which house microwave photons used in quantum computing and microwave detection. These optical photons, carried by fiber-optic or free-space links, offer a low-cost, uncooled alternative to bulky, expensive microwave coaxial cables, which are loss ...

Controlled thermonuclear fusion promises to radically transform our society, providing nearly limitless renewal energy. Cost-competitive fusion requires plasma facing components (PFC) which can sustain extreme photon and energetic particle fluxes over a lifetime of years, as these components will dictate the maintenance and overhaul periods of future reactors. Robust, scalable PFCs manufacturing m ...

On this effort Toyon Research Corp. and The Pennsylvania State University are developing deep learning-based algorithms for object recognition and new class discovery in look-down infrared (IR) imagery. Our approach involves the development of a hybrid classifier that exploits both transfer learning and semi-supervised paradigms in order to maintain good generalization accuracy, especially when li ...