Award Data

Ice crystals can form spontaneously from the freezing of water droplets at temperatures colder than -38

This SBIR/STTR project delivers an ultra-low power structural health monitoring (SHM) system that uses autonomous, wirelessly embedded sensors to monitor and assess structural integrity in wind turbine blades. EASE features impedance-based active SHM, which is highly sensitive to damage like cracks, delimitations, mass variations, fastener failures and stiffness changes. Blades are the only wind t ...

In the coming generation of Very High Temperature Reactors (VHTRs), nuclear fuel is encapsulated into billions of small, tri-structural isotropic (TRISO) fuel pellets. To facilitate the licensing and economic competitiveness of the anticipated future generation of VHTRs, improved quality control of TRISO pellets (less than one bad coating in 105) is desired. Presently, characterization of fuel pel ...

The energy storage device is today

The cost of dewatering particles is inversely proportional to particle size. Costs dramatically increase as particle size approaches 10

Coal is an abundant source of energy in the USA, but is not currently utilized effectively. Recently, the DOE has begun a carbon sequestration program is to develop advanced CO2 capture and compression technology for existing coal-fired plants with increased efficiency with no more than a 35% increase in the cost of electricity. This will require new approaches and technologies to be successful. N ...

Solid state lighting is being promoted as the ultimate lamps of future. Though the internal quantum efficiency of OLED devices is almost 100%, external efficiency is a mere 36% mainly because of poor light out-coupling (~40%) from the device. Improvement in light out-coupling to >70% and further reducing the manufacturing cost will rapidly accelerate the commercialization of the OLED technology. T ...

The fabrication of high-quality ultra thin (~20 micron) diamond crystals targets for 9 GeV highly polarized photon beams is an outstanding challenge. Current state of the art polishing/thinning techniques are not successful in thinning single crystal diamond to such dimension because of its extreme hardness and chemical inertness. These techniques create significant stresses surface and sub-surfac ...

Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) systems present significant challenges with respect to optimal energy efficiency of Photovoltaic (PV) arrays. In these systems, the PV panels replace roof tops, and other building components such as windows. Due to their diverse locations and orientations, influence of numerous environmental factors can significantly reduce the performance and overall eff ...

A key application of the technological breakthrough associated with decreased cost of DNA sequencing is metagenomics. Metagenomics is the process of sequencing DNA from whole ecosystems, rather than individuals or cultures. This approach has the potential to allow the dissection of microbial ecosystems in biofuel producing agricultural land, toxic contaminated sites and hydrocarbon recovery enviro ...