Award Data

Photovoltaics, while promising clean and reliable energy source, is not yet compatible with fossil energy for most applications. Organic-based solar cells have potential to reduce the cost of solar energy due to low-cost active materials, high-throughput reel-to-reel deposition technologies, low-temperature processing and application versatility. Currently organic photovoltaics (OPV) cannot commer ...

Digital electronics is approaching its limits in meeting the demand for increased processing speeds. Photonics, while promising high processing speed, is lacking integration capacity. Plasmonics promises to combine the information capacity of photonics with the integration density of electronics. The team of Luna Innovations, UCLA and Virginia Tech proposes to develop plasmonic logic devices and c ...

To build a more intelligent grid, electric utilities must now construct a new architecture from connected, standard technologies. This smart architecture will connect SCADA systems so they can interact more efficiently. It will employ distributed monitoring and power-use optimization. It will also connect SCADA networks to corporate networks, wireless systems, and remote monitoring stations. ...

This Phase I STTR effort will be focused on fabricating and scientifically characterizing Mo/Re (59 Mo-41 Re), and W-25Re alloys with other alloying additions such as small % of dispersion strengthening materials such as zirconia, hafnia, tungsten carbide, Hafnium (Hf), Zirconium, TaC, Hf-based carbides in select geometrical shapes using UTRON Kinetics''s innovative, and cost-effective Combustion ...

Inlustra Technologies and the University of Notre Dame propose a Phase I STTR program that, combined with a subsequent Phase II effort, will result in methods for the scalable production of semi-insulating non-polar GaN substrates. These substrates will be utilized in the fabrication of high-power/high-frequency AlGaN-GaN electronic devices capable of reliable operation under high thermal load. ...

Gallium Nitride (GaN) substrates are ideal materials for fabrication of high-power and high-frequency devices based on III-V materials. The current state-of-the-art Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) methods are plagued by several challenges, including, surface charge affects due to surface contamination, and sub-surface damages, which can limit the quality of III-V devices. Furthermore, there is ...

In response to SBIR topic MDA09-T006, USCI proposes to develop the first medium-level integrated circuit for radiation-tolerant applications. The advanced integrated circuit will be demonstrated based on a novel yet simple design SiC transistor that has the potential to provide a factor of 10X improvement in performance comparison to state-of-the-art. The SiC transistor can be fabricated by a subs ...

The occurrence of combustion instability has long been a matter of serious concern in the development of liquid-propellant rocket engines due to the high rate of energy release in a confined volume in which energy losses are relatively small. Positive feedback between the acoustic waves and unsteady combustion could lead to the destruction of an engine in a fraction of a second. The situation is ...

The United States Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is searching for a software-defined multi-channel radar receiver that would provide improved performance and added flexibility over currently deployed radar systems. In response, MaXentric is proposing a system codenamed MASR (Manycore Adaptive Software Radar). The MASR system is composed of a hierarchy of X-band front-ends, high-speed digitizers, F ...

The objective of this Phase I proposal is to demonstrate, through a rigorous design and modeling, the feasibility of a single chip Transmit/Receive Integrated Circuits (TRIC) with on-chip controller and compensation networks for next generation X-band radar systems. TRIC will include RF, analog and digital circuits on a single chip. TRIC functionality would include Frequency-modulated Continuous ...