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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 55 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2017

Demonstration of a Nano-Enabled Space Power System

The Nano-Enabled Space Power System will demonstrate power systems with nanomaterial-enhanced components as are placement for CubeSat power generation, transmission, and storage. Successful flights of these nano-power systems will accelerate the use of this revolutionary technology in the aerospace industry. The use of nano materials in solar cells, wire harnesses,and lithium ion batteries can increase the device performance without significantly altering the devices physical dimensions or the devices operating range (temperature,voltage, current). In many cases, the use of nanomaterials widens the viable range of operating conditions, such as increased depth of discharge of lithium ion batteries, tunable bandgaps in solar cells, and increased flexure tolerance of wire harnesses.

CubeSat↗
NASA NTRS2018

Role of a Chemist in Modern Industries: Design and Development of Nanoengineered Multifunctional Materials

During the past fifteen years significant investment has been made for the applications of nanotechnology in almost every aspect of life. Almost every area of research has projected improvements including biotechnology, bioinspired electronic, optical and radiological sensors, or a promise for the emergence of some novel device technologies. For such applications major focus has been placed on research nanoparticles, nanotubes nanorods and two-dimensional structures similar to that of graphene. Some near- term applications of nano- particles and nanowires have produced very promising results for better synthesis of energy storage materials, design of biologically active composites like apatites, laser host crystals, photodetectors and sensor materials for radiation detection. To achieve desired morphologies, nanomaterials can be utilized some organic melt and orient the grains by the directional solidification method. The organic treated materials produce different characteristics than coarsened oxide materials. The focus is also understanding the morphology and performance function in human organs that occur because of aging or disease, and responses to interventions. We annealed to determine the changes in morphologies and hence effect of aging. In this presentation, we will discuss correlation between the designed composition, micromorphology and the performance parameters of nanomaterials. To understand the mechanism of formation of nanoparticles, nanoboloids, fibers experimental details and observations on the of multinary compounds will be presented. These observations on the transition of nanomorphology can highlight the mechanism of the phase transition in some oxides and selenides.

Singh, N. B.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Reinforcing Additives for Ice Adhesion Reduction Coatings

Adhesion of contaminants has been identified as a ubiquitous issue for aeronautic exterior surfaces. In-flight icing is particularly hazardous for all aircraft and can be experienced throughout the year under the appropriate environmental conditions. On larger vehicles, the accretion of ice could result in loss of lift, engine failure, and potentially loss of vehicle and life were it not for active deicing or anti-icing equipment. Smaller vehicles though cannot support the mass and mechanical complexity of active ice mitigating systems and thus must rely upon passive approaches or avoid icing conditions altogether. One approach that may be applicable to all aircraft is the use of coatings. Durability remains an issue and has prevented realization of coatings for leading edge contamination mitigation. In this work, epoxy coatings were generated as a passive approach for ice adhesion mitigation and methods to improve durability were evaluated. Highly cross-linked epoxy systems can be extremely rigid, which could have deleterious consequences regarding application as a leading edge coating. Incorporation of flexible species, such as poly(ethylene glycol) may improve coating toughness.8 Additionally, core-shell rubber (CSR) particles have been utilized to improve fracture toughness of epoxies.9 Both of these more established additives are investigated in this work. An emerging additive that is also evaluated here is holey graphene. This nanomaterial possesses many of the advantageous properties of graphene (excellent mechanical properties, thermal and electrical conductivity, large surface area, etc.) while also exhibiting behaviors associated with flexible, porous materials (i.e., compressibility, increased permeation, etc.). Holey graphene, HG, was synthesized by the oxidation of defect-rich sites on graphene sheets through controlled thermal expo-sure.10 It is envisioned that the porous nature of HG would allow resin penetration through the graphitic plane, resulting in better interfacial interaction and therefore better translation of the nanomaterial’s properties to the surrounding matrix.

Wohl, Christopher J↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Ultrahigh Areal Capacity Holey Graphene Air Cathodes for Li-O2 and Li-CO2 Batteries

Advanced lithium (Li) batteries using gaseous cathode reactants such as oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2)are attractive energy storage platforms because the gases are obtained externally and thus not accounted for in the total battery weight when fully charged.The discharge products at the cathode, typically Li2O2 for Li-O2 batteries and Li2CO3 for Li-CO2 batteries, are insoluble in the electrolyte.Therefore, in order for such batteries to function properly, an “air cathode”,which is a conductive scaffold within the battery cell,is required as a physical location for cathode electrochemical reactions to occur. Prior research has identified many carbon nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes and graphene as viable choices for air cathode scaffold, while various metallic and metal-free catalytic systems integrated onto carbon-based air cathodes have been developed to improve the sluggish discharge and charge reactions. For future practical applications, the air cathode must exhibit a usable capacity per unit electrode area, or areal capacity, a critical parameter that has been largely overlooked so far in this field. In order to achieve high areal capacity, the air cathode must exhibit a sufficient amount of accessible void volume per unit electrode area while maintaining the conductive scaffold integrity during the entire electrochemical process. Here we present an ultrathick,holey graphene-based air cathode platform fabricated from a facile dry compression process that exhibits remarkable areal capacity values. Holey graphene is a carbon nanomaterial derived from graphene, but with nanometer sized holes through the nanosheet thickness.The presence of these holes enhances mass transport through electrode thickness and also enables the unique dry-press fabrication process that is not achievable using other carbon scaffold materials.The dry-pressed holey graphene air cathode platform is not only compatible with catalyst incorporation to improve battery reaction kinetics, but also allows for novel engineering of electrode architectures that is not achievable using conventional electrode fabrication approaches.The applications of such highly versatile, ultrahigh areal capacity air cathode platforms to both Li-O2 and Li-CO2 battery chemistries will be discussed.

Li-O2 batteries, Li-CO2 batteries, holey graphene,↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Intercalation and Exfoliation of Hexagonal Boron Nitride

Innovators at NASA's Glenn Research Center have made several breakthroughs in treating hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) nanomaterials, improving their properties to supplant carbon nanotubes in many applications. These advances have hBN nanomaterials set to transform applications such as heat sinks, electrical insulators, lightweight piezoelectric polymers for satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles, ceramic composites for jet engines, biomedical components, and radiation shielding technology.

Hexagonal Boron Nitride↗
NASA NTRS2015

Emerging Materials Technologies That Matter to Manufacturers

A brief overview of emerging materials technologies. Exploring the weight reduction benefit of replacing Carbon Fiber with Carbon Nanotube (CNT) in Polymer Composites. Review of the benign purification method developed for CNT sheets. The future of manufacturing will include the integration of computational material design and big data analytics, along with Nanomaterials as building blocks.

nanomaterials↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Nanostructured Material Sensor Processing Using Microfabrication Technology

This presentation discusses the fabrication of microsensors based based on nanomaterials and microfabrication technology. In particular, is it shown that nanostructured materials can be incorporated into standard micro fabrication techniques yielding improved alignment and electrical contact in a microsensor platform. A nano templating technique is also shown which provides sensor structures with unique properties.

chemical sensors nanostructures nanomaterials micr↗
NASA NTRS2023

Electronic Nose Development and Preliminary Human Breath Testing for Rapid, Non-Invasive COVID-19 Detection

We adapted an existing, spaceflight-proven, robust “electronic nose” (E-Nose) that uses an array of electrical resistivity-based nanosensors mimicking aspects of mammalian olfaction to conduct on-site, rapid screening for COVID-19 infection by measuring the pattern of sensor responses to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled human breath. We built and tested multiple copies of a hand-held prototype E-Nose sensor system, composed of 64 chemically sensitive nanomaterial sensing elements tailored to COVID-19 VOC detection; data acquisition electronics; a smart tablet with software (App) for sensor control, data acquisition and display; and a sampling fixture to capture exhaled breath samples and deliver them to the sensor array inside the E-Nose. The sensing elements detect the combination of VOCs typical in breath at parts-per-billion (ppb) levels, with repeatability of 0.02% and reproducibility of 1.2%; the measurement electronics in the E-Nose provide measurement accuracy and signal-to-noise ratios comparable to benchtop instrumentation. Preliminary clinical testing at Stanford Medicine with 63 participants, their COVID-19-positive or COVID-19-negative status determined by concomitant RT-PCR, discriminated between these two categories of human breath with a 79% correct identification rate using “leave-one-out” training-and-analysis methods. Analyzing the E-Nose response in conjunction with body temperature and other non-invasive symptom screening using advanced machine learning methods, with a much larger database of responses from a wider swath of the population, is expected to provide more accurate on-the-spot answers. Additional clinical testing, design refinement, and a mass manufacturing approach are the main steps toward deploying this technology to rapidly screen for active infection in clinics and hospitals, public and commercial venues, or at home.

COVID-19↗
NASA NTRS2000

Nanotechnology in Materials

A viewgraph presentation gives an overview of nanotechnology in materials, including details on the evolution of engineering materials and the goals and organization of processing techniques. Nanotechnology is defined and details are given for two different types of nanomaterials: (1) cetyltrimethyl ammonium chloride (CTAC) and (2) tetraethoxysilane (TEOS). Film growth is detailed through magnified images.

Iihan A. Aksay↗
NASA NTRS2001

A New Direction for NASA Materials Science Research Using the International Space Station

NASA recently created a fifth Strategic Enterprise, the Office of Biological and Physical Research (OBPR), to bring together physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering to foster interdisciplinary research. The Materials Science Program is one of five Microgravity Research disciplines within this new enterprise's Division of Physical Sciences Research. The Materials Science Program will participate within this new enterprise structure in order to facilitate effective use of ISS facilities, target scientific and technology questions and transfer scientific and technology results for Earth benefits. The Materials Science research will use a low gravity environment for flight and ground-based research in crystallization, fundamental processing, properties characterization, and biomaterials in order to obtain fundamental understanding of various phenomena effects and relationships to the structures, processing, and properties of materials. Completion of the International Space Station's (ISS) first major assembly, during the past year, provides new opportunities for on-orbit research and scientific utilization. Accommodations will support a variety of Materials Science payload hardware both in the US and international partner modules with emphasis on early use of Express Rack and Glovebox facilities. This paper addresses the current scope of the flight investigator program. These investigators will use the various capabilities of the ISS to achieve their research objectives. The type of research and classification of materials being studied will be addressed. This includes the recent emphasis being placed on nanomaterials and biomaterials type research. Materials Science Program will pursue a new, interdisciplinary approach, which contributes, to Human Space Flight Exploration research. The Materials Science Research Facility (MSRF) and other related American and International experiment modules will serve as the foundation for this research. Discussion will be included to explain the changing concept for materials science research processing capabilities aboard the ISS along with the various ground facilities necessary to support the program. Finally, the paper will address the initial utilization schedule and strategy for the various materials science payloads including their corresponding hardware.

Schlagheck, Ronald↗
NASA NTRS2001

Porosity and Variations in Microgravity Aerogel Nano-Structures: New Laser Speckle Characterization Methods - 2

The transition from sol to gel is a process that is critical to the properties of engineered nanomaterials, but one with few available techniques for observing the dynamic processes occurring during the evolution of the gel network. Specifically, the observation of various cluster aggregation models, such as diffusion-limited and reaction-limited cluster growth can be quite difficult. This can be rather important as the actual aggregation model can dramatically influence the mechanical properties of gels, and is significantly affected by the presence of convective flows, or their absence in microgravity. We have developed two new non-intrusive optical methods for observing the aggregation processes within gels in real time. These make use of the dynamic behavior of laser speckle patterns produced when an intense laser source is passed through a gelling sol. The first method is a simplified time-correlation measurement, where the speckle pattern is observed using a CCD camera and information on the movement of the scattering objects is readily apparent. This approach is extremely sensitive to minute variations in the flow field as the observed speckle pattern is a diffraction-based image, and is therefore sensitive to motions within the sol on the order of the wavelength of the probing light. Additionally, this method has proven useful in determining a precise time for the gel-point, an event often difficult to measure. Monitoring the evolution of contrast within the speckle field is another method that has proven useful for studying aeration. In this case, speckle contrast is dependent upon the size (correlation length) and number of scattering centers, increasing with increasing size, and decreasing with increasing numbers. The dynamic behavior of cluster growth in gels causes both of these to change simultaneously with time, the exact rate of which is determined by the specific aggregation model involved. Actual growth processes can now be observed, and the effects of varying gravity fields on the growth processes qualitatively described. Results on preliminary ground-based measurements have been obtained.

Hunt, A. J.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Flame Synthesis of Single- and Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes and Nanofibers

Metal-catalyzed carbon nanotubes are highly sought for a diverse range of applications that include nanoelectronics, battery electrode material, catalysis, hydrogen storage media and reinforcing agents in polymer composites. These latter applications will require vast quantities of nanotubes at competitive prices to be economically feasible. Moreover, reinforcing applications may not require ultrahigh purity nanotubes. Indeed, functionalization of nanotubes to facilitate interfacial bonding within composites will naturally introduce defects into the tube walls, lessening their tensile strength. Current methods of aerosol synthesis of carbon nanotubes include laser ablation of composite targets of carbon and catalyst metal within high temperature furnaces and decomposition of a organometallics in hydrocarbons mixtures within a tube furnace. Common to each approach is the generation of particles in the presence of the reactive hydrocarbon species at elevated temperatures. In the laser-ablation approach, the situation is even more dynamic in that particles and nanotubes are borne during the transient cooling phase of the laser-induced plasma for which the temperature far exceeds that of the surrounding hot gases within the furnace process tube. A shared limitation is that more efficient methods of nanoparticle synthesis are not readily incorporated into these approaches. In contrast, combustion can quite naturally create nanomaterials such as carbon black. Flame synthesis is well known for its commercial scalability and energy efficiency. However, flames do present a complex chemical environment with steep gradients in temperature and species concentrations. Moreover, reaction times are limited within buoyant driven flows to tens of milliseconds. Therein microgravity can greatly lessen temperature and spatial gradients while allowing independent control of flame residence times. In preparation for defining the microgravity experiments, the work presented here focuses on the effect of catalyst particle size and reactant gas in 1g.

VanderWal, R. L.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Computational Nanotechnology Molecular Electronics, Materials and Machines

This presentation covers research being performed on computational nanotechnology, carbon nanotubes and fullerenes at the NASA Ames Research Center. Topics cover include: nanomechanics of nanomaterials, nanotubes and composite materials, molecular electronics with nanotube junctions, kinky chemistry, and nanotechnology for solid-state quantum computers using fullerenes.

Srivastava, Deepak↗
NASA NTRS2002

A New Direction for the NASA Materials Science Research Using the International Space Station

In 2001 NASA created a fifth Strategic Enterprise, the Office of Biological and Physical Research (OBPR), to bring together physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering to foster interdisciplinary research. The Materials Science Program is one of five Microgravity Research disciplines within this new Enterprise's Division of Physical Sciences Research. The Materials Science Program will participate within this new enterprise structure in order to facilitate effective use of ISS facilities, target scientific and technology questions and transfer results for Earth benefits. The Materials Science research will use a low gravity environment for flight and ground-based research in crystallization, fundamental processing, properties characterization, and biomaterials in order to obtain fundamental understanding of various phenomena effects and relationships to the structures, processing, and properties of materials. Completion of the International Space Station's (ISS) first major assembly, during the past year, provides new opportunities for on-orbit research and scientific utilization. The Enterprise has recently completed an assessment of the science prioritization from which the future materials science ISS type payloads will be implemented. Science accommodations will support a variety of Materials Science payload hardware both in the US and international partner modules with emphasis on early use of Express Rack and Glovebox facilities. This paper addresses the current scope of the flight and ground investigator program. These investigators will use the various capabilities of the ISS lab facilities to achieve their research objectives. The type of research and classification of materials being studied will be addressed. This includes the recent emphasis being placed on radiation shielding, nanomaterials, propulsion materials, and biomaterials type research. The Materials Science Program will pursue a new, interdisciplinary approach, which contributes, to Human Space Flight Exploration research. The Materials Science Research Facility (MSRF) and other related American and International experiment modules will serve as the foundation for the flight research environment. A summary will explain the concept for materials science research processing capabilities aboard the ISS along with the various ground facilities necessary to support the program.

Schlagheck, Ronald A.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Nanotechnology Based Materials and Devices for Health Care

This viewgraph presentation provides information on trends in NASA nanotechnology research and development, and future biotechnological applications for that nanotechnology. The presentation covers nanoelectronics, nanosensors, and nanomaterials, biomimetics, devices and materials for health care, carbon nanotubes, biosensors for astrobiology, solid-state nanopores for DNA sequencing, and protein nanotubes.

Srivastava, Deepaka↗
NASA NTRS2003

Nanostructured Materials Development for Space Power

There have been many recent advances in the use of nanostructured materials for space power applications. In particular, the use of high purity single wall nanotubes holds promise for a variety of generation and storage devices including: thin film lithium ion batteries, microelectronic proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells, polymeric thin film solar cells, and thermionic power supplies is presented. Semiconducting quantum dots alone and in conjunction with carbon nanotubes are also being investigated for possible use in high efficiency photovoltaic solar cells. This paper will review some of the work being done at RIT in conjunction with the NASA Glenn Research Center to utilize nanomaterials in space power devices.

Raffaelle, Ryne P.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Ultrasensitive Label-free Electronic Chip for DNA Analysis Using Carbon Nanotube Nanoelectrode Arrays

There is a strong need for faster, cheaper, and simpler methods for nucleic acid analysis in today s clinical tests. Nanotechnologies can potentially provide solutions to these requirements by integrating nanomaterials with biofunctionalities. Dramatic improvement in the sensitivity and multiplexing can be achieved through the high-degree miniaturization. Here, we present our study in the development of an ultrasensitive label-free electronic chip for DNA/RNA analysis based on carbon nanotube nanoelectrode arrays. A reliable nanoelectrode array based on vertically aligned multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) embedded in a SiO2 matrix is fabricated using a bottom-up approach. Characteristic nanoelectrode behavior is observed with a low-density MWNT nanoelectrode array in measuring both the bulk and surface immobilized redox species. The open-end of MWNTs are found to present similar properties as graphite edge-plane electrodes, with a wide potential window, flexible chemical functionalities, and good biocompatibility. A BRCA1 related oligonucleotide probe with 18 bases is covalently functionalized at the open ends of the MWNTs and specifically hybridized with an oligonucleotide target as well as a PCR amplicon. The guanine bases in the target molecules are employed as the signal moieties for the electrochemical measurements. Ru(bpy)3(2+) mediator is used to further amplify the guanine oxidation signal. This technique has been employed for direct electrochemical detection of label-free PCR amplicon through specific hybridization with the BRCAl probe. The detection limit is estimated to be less than approximately 1000 DNA molecules, approaching the limit of the sensitivity by laser-based fluorescence techniques in DNA microarray. This system provides a general electronic platform for rapid molecular diagnostics in applications requiring ultrahigh sensitivity, high-degree of miniaturization, simple sample preparation, and low- cost operation.

Li, Jun↗