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Rare-earth-doped Nanoparticles for Remote Readout Topic 1.a

Award Information
Agency: Department of Energy
Branch: N/A
Contract: DE-SC0017730
Agency Tracking Number: 229827
Amount: $150,000.00
Phase: Phase I
Program: SBIR
Solicitation Topic Code: 01a
Solicitation Number: DE-FOA-0001619
Timeline
Solicitation Year: 2017
Award Year: 2017
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): 2017-06-12
Award End Date (Contract End Date): 2018-03-11
Small Business Information
9030 South Rita Road Suite 120
Tucson, AZ 85747-9101
United States
DUNS: 014750785
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 Xiushan Zhu
 (520) 799-7470
 xzhu@npphotonics.com
Business Contact
 Linda Schadler
Phone: (520) 405-9826
Email: lschadler@npphotonics.com
Research Institution
N/A
Abstract

New and novel passive optical taggants for remote readout are desired by the Office of Proliferation Detection of DOE for early detection of nuclear weapons development. NP Photonics proposes to make passive optical taggants made of rare-earth-doped glass nanoparticles for remote tracing and identification applications. Due to the low phonon energy, the rare-earth-doped specialty glasses emit light at the 3-5 µm mid-infrared atmosphere transparency window when they absorb incident lasers at near-infrared atmosphere transparency windows. These unique absorption and emission characteristics make our rare-earth-doped glass materials excellent candidates for passive optical taggants with outstanding covertness and security for remote readout. In this Phase I program we will focus on studying the emission and absorption properties of rare-earth doped specialty glasses and demonstrating proposed optical taggants with rare-earth-doped glass nanoparticles. The fully functional passive optical taggant devices for remote readout will be developed and delivered to DOE labs for test in Phase II. Our proposed passive optical taggants can be used in various commercial, homeland security, and military applications including identification of friend-or-foe, tracking of explosives and radioactive materials, and locating and identifying personnel and assets.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

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