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Briefs: Lighting
Single-Crystal SiGe/Sapphire Epitaxy
NASA's Langley Research Center has developed a new low-temperature method of SiGe/sapphire growth that produces the same single-crystal films with much less thermal loading effort to the substrate. This eliminates the time-consuming and costly high heating, long thermal soak times, and interfacial Si layer....
Facility Focus: RF & Microwave Electronics
The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) — located in Aiken, SC — is the applied research and development laboratory at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Savannah River Site (SRS)....
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Q&A: Materials
Mandal, along with Professors Yuan Yang and Nanfang Yu, built upon earlier work demonstrating that many simple plastics and polymers are excellent heat radiators that could...
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Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
An innovative optical sensing and tracking system was designed to detect, track, and determine object distance and direction in a wide, full, solid angle (160 × 160°) with an extremely high...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Geckos, spiders, and beetles have special adhesive elements on their feet, enabling them to easily run along ceilings or walls. The science of bionics tries to imitate and control such biological...
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Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Biometric-Based User Authentication
Rapid adoption of mobile platforms such as smartphones and tablet computers has increased the range of applications and data on mobile devices. The use of these devices to communicate sensitive or confidential data requires, among other things, strong front-end user authentication procedures and/or protocols to...
Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Ultrasensitive Chip-Based Sensors
An optical whispering gallery mode resonator was developed that can spin light around the circumference of a tiny sphere millions of times, creating an ultrasensitive, microchip-based sensor for multiple applications.
Application Briefs: Materials
Minalex Corp.Whitehouse Station, NJwww.minalex.com In PyeongChang, South Korea this month, competitors representing 89 countries will be competing for Olympic gold. For many skiers,...
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NASA Spinoff: Aerospace
Spinoff is NASA's annual publication featuring successfully commercialized NASA technology. This commercialization has contributed to the development of products and services...
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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Existing optics mounts sandwich the optic axially between two metal components, which can lead to optical surface damage and misalignment when exposed to fluctuating temperatures. Thermal-compensating optics...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Pressure sensors play an important role in engine maintenance and monitoring systems by diagnosing problems before they happen. To capture the most accurate data, however, these sensors must be...
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Briefs: Propulsion
Government infrastructure facilities such as water treatment facilities, power plants, laboratories, and the like may be targets for terrorist attacks. Similarly, oil pipelines, power grids,...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
For many researchers, graphene is ideal for use in filtration membranes. A single sheet of graphene resembles atomically thin chicken wire, and is composed of carbon atoms joined in...
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Articles: Test & Measurement
This column presents technologies that have applications in commercial areas, possibly creating the products of tomorrow. To learn more about each technology, see the contact information provided for that innovation.
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Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Pointing precision is a critical element of instrumentation for optical communications and ranging in space, affecting laser design, link power budgets, and SWaP. While star trackers possess pointing...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Existing nanosensor technologies depend on an external power source (typically a battery) to operate. Chemical and biological sensors based on nanowire or nanotube technologies exhibit...
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Articles: Electronics & Computers
As ubiquitous as electronics are today, they are finding even more uses as Internet of Things (IoT) applications expand. Tech Briefs posed questions to electronics industry executives to get their views on...
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Briefs: Nanotechnology
Film Blocks Electromagnetic Interference
Electromagnetic interference (EMI) can harm smartphones, tablets, chips, drones, wearables, aircraft, and human health. EMI is increasing with the explosive proliferation of devices that generate it. A technique was developed to produce relatively low-cost EMI-blocking composite films.
Application Briefs: Power
HarwinFarlington, Portsmouth, UKwww.harwin.com There are certain areas of the planet that are simply too sparsely inhabited for it to be economically viable to roll out...
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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Liquid droplets are used in many applications, from printing ink on paper to creating microcapsules for drug delivery. Inkjet printing is the most common technique used to...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Plasma Generator Using Spiral Conductors
NASA's Langley Research Center has developed a patented SansEC sensor technology for use in many different areas, including tall structures and wind turbines. The SansEC technology is a proven wireless sensing platform capable of measuring the electrical impedance of physical matter in proximity to the...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Lateral nozzle forces are known to cause severe structural damage during testing of any new rocket engine configuration under development. While three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD)...
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Briefs: Software
Software development and testing comprises about half of the control system design and integration effort, so a programming platform that can ease and speed the process is vital. Such PC-based platforms...
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Briefs: Materials
When choosing materials to make something, tradeoffs need to be made among properties such as thickness, stiffness, and weight. A new material called nanocardboard was...
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Briefs: Transportation
RTM370 imide resin was developed to address the limitations of conventional imide resins, which are generated from commercially available symmetrical biphenyl dianhydride...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
When a coffee mug leaves a ring, the outer edges of that ring are darker than the inside of the ring. That's because the solute is separated from the liquid during the...
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Briefs: Motion Control
Researchers have created a two-dimensional, shape-changing sheet that moves autonomously in a reactant-filled fluid. The integrated system utilizes a chemical reaction to activate the fluid...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Jet engines can have up to 25,000 individual parts, making regular maintenance a tedious task that can take more than a month per engine. Many components are located deep inside...
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Briefs: Medical
A novel foot-pedal-operated system and device were developed to control translational and rotational movement of an object in three-dimensional (3D) space. The Foot Pedal Controller system enables operators to control...
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