Award Data

In miniature gas turbines for UAV applications, traditional bearings exhibit a typical lifetime of only 25 hours due to excessive axial loading. Mainstream proposes to use a passive, permanent magnet thrust bearing to alleviate this problem and increase service life to over 1000 hours. Since this type of bearing is non-contacting, it can operate at very high rotational speeds with minimal heat gen ...

A mathematical framework for detection and classification of weak, distributed patterns on computer networks is proposed. The framework will provide rigorous methods for understanding performance bounds and optimality of intrusion detection methods, while also providing concrete and implementable algorithms. The algorithms will find immediate application in cyber-security efforts, as well as mor ...

Antimony containing III-V semiconducting compounds are particularly attractive for the fabrication of a wide variety of electronic and optoelectronic devices such as photo detectors operating in the long wave infrared wavelength (12-32µm) range. The production of epi quality GaSb wafers still remains one of the important problems for rapid commercialization of GaSb devices. Sinmat Inc. proposes a ...

The objective of this proposal is to demonstrate the feasibility of a new thromboelastograph (TEG)-like instrument that has the same basic capabilities as the TEG – that is to say, capabilities of monitoring in vitro the kinetics, strength, and stability of clot formation in blood samples that are clot induced – but which is miniaturized, highly portable, rugged, and insensitive to adverse env ...

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 ...

Conversion of sunlight to chemical fuels by artificial photosynthesis has been a long-sought goal. The major goal of the proposed effort is to develop a novel fuel-generating (e.g., hydrogen) photolytic device, which consists of a semiconductor nanowire decorated with metal nanoparticles. The project targets a low-cost technology by fabricating and utilizing the nanowire-nanoparticle conjugate de ...

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 ...

Genome-scale predictable cellular design and engineering of biomanufacturing systems is the overarching a goal of DARPA's Living Foundry thrust and, if realized, will enable rapid engineering of living biosystems for a broad range of applications in biotechnology and pharmacology. However, constructing living cells with designed genome is not fully automated and is severely limited by inhere ...

The ever-decreasing size of the electronic microchips and the ever-increasing density of electronic components required to support future Air Force platforms are creating the problem of substantial localized heat generation that can impair component operation. State of the art thermal interface materials (TIMs), that are used to dissipate heat from the source to the spreader in a microchip, are se ...