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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

A 10-Gb/s Driver/Receiver ASIC and Optical Modules for Particle Physics Experiments

We present the design and test results of a Drivers and Limiting AmplifierS ASIC operating at 10 Gbps (DLAS10) and three Miniature Optical Transmitter/Receiver/Transceiver modules (MTx+, MRx+, and MTRx+) based on DLAS10. DLAS10 can drive two Transmitter Optical Sub-Assemblies (TOSAs) of Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSELs), receive the signals from two Receiver Optical Sub-Assemblies (ROSAs) that have no embedded limiting amplifiers, or drive a VCSEL TOSA and receive the signal from a ROSA, respectively. Each channel of DLAS10 consists of an input Continuous Time Linear Equalizer (CTLE), a four-stage limiting amplifier (LA), and an output driver. The LA amplifies the signals of variable levels to a stable swing. The output driver drives VCSELs or impedance-controlled traces. DLAS10 is fabricated in a 65 nm CMOS technology. The die is 1 mm x 1 mm. DLAS10 is packaged in a 4 mm x 4 mm 24-pin quad-flat no-leads (QFN) package. DLAS10 has been tested in MTx+, MRx+, and MTRx+ modules. Both measured optical and electrical eye diagrams pass the 10 Gbps eye mask test. Furthermore, the input electrical sensitivity is 40 mVp-p, while the input optical sensitivity is -12 dBm. The total jitter of MRx+ is 29 ps (P-P) with a random jitter of 1.6 ps (RMS) and a deterministic jitter of 9.9 ps. Each MTx+/MTRx+ module consumes 82 mW/ch and 174 mW/ch, respectively.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2023

Fabrication, Modeling, and Testing of a Prototype for Particle Thermal Energy Storage Containment

Increasing penetration of variable renewable energy resources requires the deployment of energy storage at a range of durations. Long-duration energy storage (LDES) technologies will fulfill the need to firm variable renewable energy resource output throughout the year. Conventional electrochemical batteries (e.g., lithium-ion) are uneconomical in this role due to high energy capacity costs. Thermal energy storage (TES) is one promising technology for LDES applications because of its siting flexibility and ease of scaling. Particle-based TES systems use low-cost solid particles that have higher temperature limits than the molten salts used in traditional concentrated solar power systems. A key component in particle-based TES systems is the containment silo for the high-temperature (> 1100 degrees C) particles. This study combined experimental testing and computational modeling methods to design and characterize the performance of a particle containment silo for LDES applications. A containment silo prototype was built at a laboratory scale and used to validate a congruent transient finite element analysis (FEA) model. The validation compared the actual and predicted temperature profile through the prototype over six days as the particles cooled from their initial temperature. The performance of a commercial scale (> 5 GWhth) was then characterized using the validated model. The transient FEA model was subject to several charge-discharge cycles to mimic a possible operating schedule. The commercial-scale model predicted a storage efficiency in excess of 95% after five days of storage with a design storage temperature of 1200 degrees C. Insulation material and concrete temperature limits were considered as well. The validation of the methodology means the FEA model can simulate a range of scenarios for future applications. This work supports the development of a promising LDES technology with implications for grid-scale electrical energy storage, but also for thermal energy storage for industrial process heating applications.

ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2025

High‐Speed Embedded Ink Writing of Anatomic‐Size Organ Constructs

Embedded ink writing (EIW) is an emerging 3D printing technique that fabricates complex 3D structures from various biomaterial inks but is limited to a printing speed of ∼10 mm s −1 due to suboptimal rheological properties of particulate-dominated yield-stress fluids when used as liquid baths. In this work, a particle-hydrogel interactive system to design advanced baths with enhanced yield stress and extended thixotropic response time for realizing high-speed EIW is developed. In this system, the interactions between particle additive and three representative polymeric hydrogels enable the resulting nanocomposites to demonstrate different rheological behaviors. Accordingly, the interaction models for the nanocomposites are established, which are subsequently validated by macroscale rheological measurements and advanced microstructure characterization techniques. Filament formation mechanisms in the particle-hydrogel interactive baths are comprehensively investigated at high printing speeds. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed high-speed EIW method, an anatomic-size human kidney construct is successfully printed at 110 mm s −1 , which only takes ∼4 h. This work breaks the printing speed barrier in current EIW and propels the maximum printing speed by at least 10 times, providing an efficient and promising solution for organ reconstruction in the future.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Fabrication, Modeling, and Testing of a Prototype Thermal Energy Storage Containment

Increasing penetration of variable renewable energy resources requires the deployment of energy storage at a range of durations. Long-duration energy storage (LDES) technologies will fulfill the need to firm variable renewable energy resource output year round; lithium-ion batteries are uneconomical at these durations. Thermal energy storage (TES) is one promising technology for LDES applications because of its siting flexibility and ease of scaling. Particle-based TES systems use low-cost solid particles that have higher temperature limits than the molten salts used in traditional concentrated solar power systems. A key component in particle-based TES systems is the containment silo for the high-temperature (>1100 degrees C) particles. This study combined experimental testing and computational modeling methods to design and characterize the performance of a particle containment silo for LDES applications. A laboratory-scale silo prototype was built and validated the congruent transient finite element analysis (FEA) model. The performance of a commercial-scale silo was then characterized using the validated model. The commercial-scale model predicted a storage efficiency above 95% after 5 days of storage with a design storage temperature of 1200 degrees C. Insulation material and concrete temperature limits were considered as well. The validation of the methodology means the FEA model can simulate a range of scenarios for future applications. This work supports the development of a promising LDES technology with implications for grid-scale electrical energy storage, but also for thermal energy storage for industrial process heating applications.

clean energy↗
DOE OSTI2022

Challenges for unsupervised anomaly detection in particle physics

Anomaly detection relies on designing a score to determine whether a particular event is uncharacteristic of a given background distribution. One way to define a score is to use autoencoders, which rely on the ability to reconstruct certain types of data (background) but not others (signals). In this paper, we study some challenges associated with variational autoencoders, such as the dependence on hyperparameters and the metric used, in the context of anomalous signal (top and W) jets in a QCD background. We find that the hyperparameter choices strongly affect the network performance and that the optimal parameters for one signal are non-optimal for another. In exploring the networks, we uncover a connection between the latent space of a variational autoencoder trained using mean-squared-error and the optimal transport distances within the dataset. We then show that optimal transport distances to representative events in the background dataset can be used directly for anomaly detection, with performance comparable to the autoencoders. Whether using autoencoders or optimal transport distances for anomaly detection, we find that the choices that best represent the background are not necessarily best for signal identification. These challenges with unsupervised anomaly detection bolster the case for additional exploration of semi-supervised or alternative approaches.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2021

Noise and error analysis and optimization in particle-based kinetic plasma simulations

In this paper we analyze the noise in macro-particle methods used in plasma physics and fluid dynamics, leading to approaches for minimizing the total error, focusing on electrostatic models in one dimension. We begin by describing kernel density estimation for continuous values of the spatial variable x, expressing the kernel in a form in which its shape and width are represented separately. The covariance matrix of the noise in the density is computed, first for uniform true density. The bandwidth of the covariance matrix C(x,y) is related to the width of the kernel. A feature that stands out is the presence of constant negative terms in the elements of the covariance matrix both on and off-diagonal. These negative correlations are related to the fact that the total number of particles is fixed at each time step; they also lead to the property ∫C(x,y)dy = 0. We investigate the effect of these negative correlations on the electric field computed by Gauss's law, finding that the noise in the electric field is related to a process called the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck bridge, leading to a covariance matrix of the electric field with variance significantly reduced relative to that of a Brownian process. For non-constant density, p(x), still with continuous x, we analyze the total error in the density estimation and discuss it in terms of bias-variance optimization (BVO). For some characteristic length l, determined by the density and its second derivative, and kernel width h, having too few particles within h leads to too much variance; for h that is large relative to l, there is too much smoothing of the density. The optimum between these two limits is found by BVO. For kernels of the same width, it is shown that this optimum (minimum) is weakly sensitive to the kernel shape. Next, we repeat the analysis for x discretized on a grid. In this case the charge deposition rule is determined by a particle shape. An important property to be respected in the discrete system is the exact preservation of total charge on the grid; this property is necessary to ensure that the electric field is equal at both ends, consistent with periodic boundary conditions. We find that if the particle shapes satisfy a partition of unity property, the particle charge deposited on the grid is conserved exactly. Further, if the particle shape is expressed as the convolution of a kernel with another kernel that satisfies the partition of unity, then the particle shape obeys the partition of unity. This property holds for kernels of arbitrary width, including widths that are not integer multiples of the grid spacing. Furthermore, we show results relaxing the approximations used to do BVO optimization analytically, by doing numerical computations of the total error as a function of the kernel width, on a grid in x. The comparison between numerical and analytical results shows good agreement over a range of particle shapes. We discuss the practical implications of our results, including the criteria for design and implementation of computationally efficient particle shapes that take advantage of the developed theory.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
NASA NTRS1992

H Ly-alpha transmittance of thin foils of C, Si/C, and Al/C for keV particle detectors

A class of instruments designed for remote sensing of space plasmas by measuring energetic neutral atoms (ENA) uses a thin foil as both a signal generator and a light shield. An ENA imager must look directly at the ENA source region, which is also usually an intense source of H Ly-alpha (1216 A) photons. It is desirable to minimize the energy threshold for ENA detectors, at the same time maximizing the blocking of H Ly-alpha. Optimizing filter design to meet these two contrary requirements has led us to measure the transmittance of thin C, Si/C, and Al/C foils at H Ly-alpha. Our results indicate that (1) transmittance of less than 0.0007 can be achieved with 7 micro-g/sq cm Si on 1.7 micro-g/sq cm C; (2) an Si/C composite foil with a thin carbon layer is more effective in blocking UV radiation while having the lowest energy threshold of all the foils measured; and (3) transmittance of Si/C foils of known Si and C thicknesses cannot be accurately predicted, but must be measured.

Drake, V. A.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Economic Analysis of an Electric Thermal Energy Storage System Using Solid Particles for Grid Electricity Storage

As renewable power generation becomes the mainstream new-built energy source, energy storage will become an indispensable need to complement the uncertainty of renewable resources to firm the power supply. When phasing out fossil-fuel power plants to meet the carbon neutral utility target in the midcentury around the world, large capacity of energy storage will be needed to provide reliable grid power. The renewable power integration with storage can support future carbon-free utility and has several significant impacts including increasing the value of renewable generation to the grid, improving the peak-load response, and balancing the electricity supply and demand. Long-duration energy storage (10–100 hours duration) can potentially complement the reduction of fossil-fuel baseload generation that otherwise would risk grid security when a large portion of grid power comes from variable renewable sources. Current energy storage methods based on pumped storage hydropower or batteries have many limitations. Thermal energy storage (TES) has unique advantages in scale and siting flexibility to provide grid-scale storage capacity. A particle-based TES system has promising cost and performance for the future growing energy storage needs. This paper introduces the system and components required for the particle TES to be technically and economically competitive. A technoeconomic analysis based on preliminary component designs and performance shows that the particle TES integrated with an efficient air-Brayton combined cycle power system can provide power for several days by low-cost, high-performance storage cycles. It addresses grid storage needs by enabling large-scale grid integration of intermittent renewables like wind and solar, thereby increasing their grid value. The design specifications and cost estimations of major components in a commercial scale system are presented in this paper. The cost model provides insights for further development and cost comparison with competing technologies.

27 ARPA - Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy↗
DOE OSTI2021

Economic Analysis of a Novel Thermal Energy Storage System Using Solid Particles for Grid Electricity Storage: Preprint

As renewable power generation becomes the mainstream new-built energy source, energy storage will become an indispensable need to complement the uncertainty of renewable resources to firm the power supply. When phasing out fossil-fuel power plants to meet the carbon neutral utility target in the midcentury around the world, large capacity of energy storage will be needed to provide reliable grid power. The integration of renewable power and storage to support future carbon-free utility has several significant and positive impacts including expanding the renewable generation into the grid, improving the peak-load response, and balancing the electricity supply and demand. Long-duration energy storage (10–100 hours duration) can potentially complement the reduction of fossil-fuel baseload generation that otherwise would risk grid security when a large portion of grid power comes from variable renewable sources. Current energy storage methods based on pumped storage hydropower or batteries have many limitations. Thermal energy storage (TES) has unique advantages in scale and siting flexibility to provide grid-scale storage capacity. A particle-based TES system has promising cost and performance for the future growing energy storage needs. This paper introduces the system and components required for the particle TES to be technically and economically competitive. A technoeconomic analysis based on preliminary component designs and performance shows that the particle TES integrated with an efficient air-Brayton combined cycle power system can provide power for several days by low-cost, high-performance storage cycles. It addresses grid storage needs by enabling large-scale grid integration of intermittent renewables like wind and solar, thereby increasing their grid value. The design specifications and cost estimations of major components in a commercial scale system are presented in this paper. The cost model provides insights for further development and cost comparison with competing technologies.

27 ARPA - Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy↗
NASA NTRS2009

Grooved Fuel Rings for Nuclear Thermal Rocket Engines

An alternative design concept for nuclear thermal rocket engines for interplanetary spacecraft calls for the use of grooved-ring fuel elements. Beyond spacecraft rocket engines, this concept also has potential for the design of terrestrial and spacecraft nuclear electric-power plants. The grooved ring fuel design attempts to retain the best features of the particle bed fuel element while eliminating most of its design deficiencies. In the grooved ring design, the hydrogen propellant enters the fuel element in a manner similar to that of the Particle Bed Reactor (PBR) fuel element.

Emrich, William↗
NASA NTRS1979

Trigger, an active release experiment that stimulated auroral particle precipitation and wave emissions

The experiment design, including a description of the diagnostic and chemical release payload, and the general results are given for an auroral process simulation experiment. A drastic increase of the field aligned charged particle flux was observed over the approximate energy range 10 eV to more than 300 keV, starting about 150 ms after the release and lasting about one second. The is evidence of a second particle burst, starting one second after the release and lasting for tens of seconds, and evidence for a periodic train of particle bursts occurring with a 7.7 second period from 40 to 130 seconds after the release. A transient electric field pulse of 200 mv/m appeared just before the particle flux increase started. Electrostatic wave emissions around 2 kHz, as well as a delayed perturbation of the E-region below the plasma cloud were also observed. Some of the particle observations are interpreted in terms of field aligned electrostatic acceleration a few hundred kilometers above the injected plasma cloud. It is suggested that the acceleration electric field was created by an instability driven by field aligned currents originating in the plasma cloud.

Holmgren, G.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Involving the new generations in Fermilab endeavors

Since 1984 the Italian groups of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and Italian Universities, collaborating with the DOE laboratory of Fermilab (US) have been running a two-month summer training program for Italian university students. While in the first year the program involved only four physics students of the University of Pisa, in the following years it was extended to engineering students. This extension was very successful and the engineering students have been since then extremely well accepted by the Fermilab Technical, Accelerator, and Scientific Computing Division groups. Over the many years of its existence, this program has proven to be the most effective way to engage new students in Fermilab endeavors. Many students have extended their collaboration with Fermilab with their Master’s Thesis and PhD. Since 2004 the program has been supported in part by DOE in the frame of an exchange agreement with INFN. Over its almost 40 years of history, the program has grown in scope and size and has involved more than 550 Italian students from more than 20 Italian Universities, Several Institutes of Research, including ASI and INAF in Italy, and the ISSNAF Foundation in the US, have provided additional financial support. Since the program does not exclude appropriately selected non-Italian students, a handful of students from European and non-European Universities were also accepted over the years. Each intern is supervised by a Fermilab Mentor responsible for performing the training program. Training programs spanned from Tevatron, CMS, Muon (g-2), Mu2e, and Short Baseline Neutrino Experiments and DUNE design and experimental data analysis, development of particle detectors (silicon trackers, calorimeters, drift chambers, neutrino and dark matter detectors), design of electronic and accelerator components, development of infrastructures and software for exascale data handling, research on superconductive elements and on accelerating cavities, and theory of particle accelerators. Since 2010, within an extended program supported by the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics, a total of 30 students in physics, astrophysics, and engineering have been hosted for two months in the summer at US space science Research Institutes and laboratories. In 2015 the University of Pisa included these programs within its educational programs. Accordingly, Summer School students are enrolled at the University of Pisa for the duration of the internship and are identified and ensured as such. At the end of the internship, the students are required to write summary reports on their achievements. After positive evaluation by a University Examining Board, interns are acknowledged credits for their Diploma Supplement. The program was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic but restarted successfully in 2022. We believe this program can be taken as a model and easily adopted by interested institutions.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
NASA NTRS1978

ISEE-C HKH high energy cosmic rays

The paper describes the ISEE-C multidetector cosmic ray telescope experiment. The HKH particle identifier sensor array is designed to identify the charge and mass of incident cosmic ray nuclei from H-1 to Ni-64 over the energy range of approximately 20 to 500 MeV/nucleon. Particle identification is based on the multiple energy loss technique. The scientific aspects of the experiment are briefly reviewed and consideration is given to the flight hardware, including sensors, event encoding, buffer memory, redundancy and commandability, and packaging.

Greiner, D. E.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Design of a shuttle-based space debris telescope

A 1.6-meter diameter f/0.95 all-reflecting telescope was designed to observe orbital debris particles as small as 1 mm from the shuttle payload bay. The telescope was specified to have a flat focal surface without the imposition of refractive elements. Two design configurations involving three mirrors were evaluated - a reflective Schmidt-Cassegrain and a modified Paul corrector. The Paul system was found to be more compact and appropriate for this application.

Richardson, E. H.↗
DOE OSTI2025

High-Temperature Cyclic Particle Storage Bin Testing

The High-Temperature Particle Storage Bin Testing project was designed to answer fundamental questions and provide a demonstration for a small-scale particle-based TES system. This was a first-of-its-kind particle-based TES test system that provided experimental observations of a small-scale TES bin for operation over multiple cycles with particle inlet temperatures up to 800 °C.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
NASA NTRS2004

Determining Sizes of Particles in a Flow from DPIV Data

A proposed method of measuring the size of particles entrained in a flow of a liquid or gas would involve utilization of data from digital particle-image velocimetry (DPIV) of the flow. That is to say, with proper design and operation of a DPIV system, the DPIV data could be processed according to the proposed method to obtain particle sizes in addition to particle velocities. As an additional benefit, one could then compute the mass flux of the entrained particles from the particle sizes and velocities. As in DPIV as practiced heretofore, a pulsed laser beam would be formed into a thin sheet to illuminate a plane of interest in a flow field and the illuminated plane would be observed by means of a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera aimed along a line perpendicular to the illuminated plane. Unlike in DPIV as practiced heretofore, care would be taken to polarize the laser beam so that its electric field would lie in the illuminated plane, for the reason explained in the next paragraph. The proposed method applies, more specifically, to transparent or semitransparent spherical particles that have an index of refraction different from that of the fluid in which they are entrained. The method is based on the established Mie theory, which describes the scattering of light by diffraction, refraction, and specular reflection of light by such particles. In the case of a particle illuminated by polarized light and observed in the arrangement described in the preceding paragraph, the Mie theory shows that the image of the particle on the focal plane of the CCD camera includes two glare spots: one attributable to light reflected toward the camera and one attributable to light refracted toward the camera. The distance between the glare spots is a known function of the size of the particle, the indices of refraction of the particle material, and design parameters of the camera optics. Hence, the size of a particle can be determined from the distance between the glare spots. The proposed method would be implemented in an algorithm that would automatically identify, and measure the distance between, the glare spots for each particle for which a suitable image has been captured in a DPIV image frame. The algorithm (see figure) would begin with thresholding of data from the entire image frame to reduce noise, thereby facilitating discrimination of particle images from the background and aiding in the separation of overlapping particles. It is important not to pick a threshold level so high that the light intensity between a given pair of glare spots does not fall below the threshold value, leaving the glare spots disconnected. The image would then be scanned in a sequence of rows and columns of pixels to identify groups of adjacent pixels that contain nonzero brightnesses and that are surrounded by pixels of zero brightness. Each such group would be assumed to constitute the image of one particle. Each such group would be further analyzed to determine whether the image was saturated; saturated particle images must be rejected because the locations of glare spots in saturated images cannot accurately be determined. Within each unsaturated particle image, the centroids (deemed to be the locations) of the glare spots would be determined by means of gradients of brightness distributions and three-point horizontal and three-point vertical Gaussian estimates based on the brightness values of the brightest pixels and the pixels adjacent to them. If the brightness of a given particle image contained only one peak, then it would be assumed that a second glare spot did not exist and that image would be rejected.

Wernet, M. P.↗
NASA NTRS2012

Design Through Integration of On-Board Calibration Device with Imaging Spectroscopy Instruments

The main purpose of the Airborne Visible and Infrared Imaging Spectroscopy (AVIRIS) project is to "identify, measure, and monitor constituents of the Earth's surface and atmosphere based on molecular absorption and particle scattering signatures." The project designs, builds, and tests various imaging spectroscopy instruments that use On-Board Calibration devices (OBC) to check the accuracy of the data collected by the spectrometers. The imaging instrument records the spectral signatures of light collected during flight. To verify the data is correct, the OBC shines light which is collected by the imaging spectrometer and compared against previous calibration data to track spectral response changes in the instrument. The spectral data has the calibration applied to it based on the readings from the OBC data in order to ensure accuracy.

imaging spectroscopy↗
NASA NTRS1976

Functional colloidal particles for immunoresearch

The paper deals with the development of a new class of immunological reagents consisting of antibodies covalently bonded to polymeric microspheres to serve as convenient markers for detection of cell surface antigens by scanning electron and light microscopy. Attention is focused on the design and synthesis of spherical particles containing hydroxyl and carboxyl groups on their surface in a wide range of sizes (30-340 nm diam) by emulsion copolymerization, the preparation of spherical particles ranging from 300 nm to 3 microns and containing a variety of functional groups by means of ionizing radiation, and the experimental conditions for the covalent bonding of fluorescent molecules and antibodies to the spheres by means of the cyanogen bromide, carbodiimide and glutaraldehyde methods. These reagents are used to locate antigens on red blood cells, on mouse and human lymphocytes, and on the surface of photoreceptors. They offer a number of advantages and applications for the study of cell surfaces for immunodiagnosis.

Yen, S. P. S.↗