Award Data

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) and its partners, Research Support Systems (RSI, a PSI-subsidiary) and Professor Thomas Strohmer of UC Davis, propose to develop an innovative approach that can be employed by an ‘on-the-move’ sensor constellation to determine the size (length, width, and height), absolute geo-location, and 3-D concentration distribution of chemical threat clouds released on battle ...

Research in silicon photonics has received much attention in recent years for its potential to utilize well developed silicon processing technology. A broad range of linear and nonlinear silicon photonic devices such as modulators, splitters, switches and detectors have been demonstrated. However, the most important challenge in silicon photonics thus far is the difficulty of making electrically p ...

Thermopile arrays manufactured using integrated process compatible materials and micro-machining will provide high performance with low manufacturing cost. Black Forest Engineering (BFE) teamed with Case Western Reserve University will design thermopiles using silicon based semiconductors and compare performance. Low cost thermopiles, differentially coupled with advanced BFE CMOS readout, will pr ...

In this program, Omega Optics and the University of Texas at Austin propose to develop an on-chip surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectrometer array for single molecule detection. The sensitivity of the SERS spectrometer comes from the 5-nm gap between gold nanowires, which can achieve 108 enhancement factor (EF) for the Raman scattering signals. Especially, these gold nanowires are preci ...

TRACLabs Inc. has worked with NASA to create indoor/outdoor, vision-based leader-following systems for sparse, extra-terrestrial environments. Brown University's Robotics Group has demonstrated leader-following and gesture recognition in high-traffic, dynamic, indoor environments using active lidar sensing. We propose to combine our technologies in order to create a passive sensing system that w ...

The Army has a clear need for a small unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) capable of autonomously accompanying a single soldier or vehicle. Such a UGV would help solve both logistical problems of soldiers needing to transport more equipment and supplies than they can carry in a backpack, and tactical problems of scouting unsafe areas. Multiple designs for such UGVs exist; however, they require active re ...

This Small Business Technology Transfer Research program will develop narrow band plasmonic resonant cavity filters with integrated microbolometer sensors operating in the long wave infrared (LWIR) atmospheric transmission band for IR absorption measurements of low concentration chemicals. IR spectroscopy can identify a wide range of contaminants, including chemical/biological warfare agents, exp ...

InnoSys and Purdue University will continue to research and develop robust Phase I approaches for building, implementing and demonstrating a new class of terahertz (THz) vacuum electronic device (VED) power amplifiers and power sources at frequencies in the range of 0.3-3.0 THz (the THz regime) employing advanced micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) and vacuum technology and processes. There is ...

We propose to realize a new class of microbolometer FPA technology with significantly reduced 1/f noise by replacing the sensing material (e.g. VOx) with colossal magnetoresistive (CMR) oxides. The program uniquely combines Agiltron’s experience in novel IR imager development and leading academic research on CMR at Los Alamos National Lab (LANL). The LANL Team has developed breakthrough proce ...

Physical Sciences Inc. proposes an innovative, filter free approach to rapidly concentrate and detect bacterial spores from large volumes of flowing water for the purpose of early warning detection of contaminated potable water supplies against low concentration biological pathogens. Our approach builds on previous concentration work to study the feasibility of optimizing this approach and lays t ...