Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “device packaging”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 793 records · Page 44
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1989

Development of a tether deployment monitoring system

The feasibility of monitoring the position of a tether during orbital deployment is discussed. Attention is given to the techniques for attaching reflectors to the tether at periodic intervals during the deployment process, which could then be tracked visually or with a radar unit that is pointed towards the targets by the control system. Consideration is also given to a method for tether attitude and tension detection, and a launching device to attach small instrumentation platforms onto the tether during deployment. The configuration of a tether deployment monitoring system (TEDEMS) and the equipment developed to perform the above tasks are described, along with an analysis of requirements for the construction of a family of space-borne TEDEMS suitable for use on the Space Shuttle, Expendable Launch Vehicles, or the Space Station. The potential uses of the TEDEMS for launching small tether-borne experimental packages are discussed. Design and block diagrams are included.

Ibanez, P.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Fully Printed, Flexible, Phased Array Antenna for Lunar Surface Communication

NASAs future exploration missions focus on the manned exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond, which will rely heavily on the development of a reliable communications infrastructure from planetary surface-to-surface, surface-to-orbit, and back to Earth. Flexible antennas are highly desired in many scenarios. Active phased array antennas (active PAAs) with distributed control and processing electronics at the surface of an antenna aperture offer numerous advantages for radar communications. Large-area active PAAs on flexible substrates are of particular interest in NASA s space radars due to their efficient inflatable package that can be rolled up during transportation and deployed in space. Such an inflatable package significantly reduces stowage volume and mass. Because of these performance and packaging advantages, large-area inflatable active PAAs are highly desired in NASA s surface-to-orbit and surface-to-relay communications. To address the issues of flexible electronics, a room-temperature printing process of active phased-array antennas on a flexible Kapton substrate was developed. Field effect transistors (FETs) based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs), with many unique physical properties, were successfully proved feasible for the PAA system. This innovation is a new type of fully inkjet-printable, two-dimensional, high-frequency PAA on a flexible substrate at room temperature. The designed electronic circuit components, such as the FET switches in the phase shifter, metal interconnection lines, microstrip transmission lines, etc., are all printed using a special inkjet printer. Using the developed technology, entire 1x4, 2x2, and 4x4 PAA systems were developed, packaged, and demonstrated at 5.3 GHz. Several key solutions are addressed in this work to solve the fabrication issues. The source/drain contact is developed using droplets of silver ink printed on the source/drain areas prior to applying CNT thin-film. The wet silver ink droplets allow the silver to wet the CNT thin-film area and enable good contact with the source and drain contact after annealing. A passivation layer to protect the device channel is developed by bonding a thin Kapton film on top of the device channel. This film is also used as the media for transferring the aligned CNT thin-film on the device substrate. A simple and cost-effective technique to form multilayer metal interconnections on flexible substrate is developed and demonstrated. Contact vias are formed on the second substrate prior to bonding on the first substrate. Inkjet printing is used to fill the silver ink into the via structure. The printed silver ink penetrates through the vias to contact with the contact pads on the bottom layer. It is then annealed to form a good connection. One-dimensional and two-dimensional PAAs were fabricated and characterized. In these circuits, multilayer metal interconnects were used to make a complete PAA system.

Subbaraman, Harish↗
NASA NTRS1983

Development and fabrication of a high current, fast recovery power diode

A high voltage (VR = 1200 V), high current (IF = 150 A), fast recovery ( 700 ns) and low forward voltage drop ( 1.5 V) silicon rectifier was designed and the process developed for its fabrication. For maximum purity, uniformity and material characteristic stability, neutron transmutation n-type doped float zone silicon is used. The design features a hexagonal chip for maximum area utilization of space available in the DO-8 diode package, PIN diffused junction structure with deep diffused D(+) anode and a shallow high concentration n(+) cathode. With the high temperature glass passivated positive bevel mesa junction termination, the achieved blocking voltage is close to the theoretical limit of the starting material. Gold diffusion is used to control the lifetime and the resulting effect on switching speed and forward voltage tradeoff. For solder reflow assembly, trimetal (Al-Ti-Ni) contacts are used. The required major device electrical characteristics were achieved. Due to the tradeoff nature of forward voltage drop and reverse recovery time, a compromise was reached for these values.

Berman, A. H.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Mars Array Technology Experiment Developed to Test Solar Arrays on Mars

Solar arrays will be the power supply for future missions to the planet Mars, including landers, rovers, and eventually human missions to explore the Martian surface. Until Mars Pathfinder landed in July 1997, no solar array had been used on the surface. The MATE package is intended to measure the solar energy reaching the surface, characterize the Martian environment to gather the baseline information required for designing power systems for long-duration missions, and to quantify the performance and degradation of advanced solar cells on the Martian surface. To measure the properties of sunlight reaching the Martian surface, MATE incorporates two radiometers and a visible/NIR spectrometer. The radiometers consist of multiple thermocouple junctions using thin-film technology. These devices generate a voltage proportional to the solar intensity. One radiometer measures the global broadband solar intensity, including both the direct and scattered sunlight, with a field of view of approximately 130. The second radiometer incorporates a slit to measure the direct (unscattered) intensity radiation. The direct radiometer can only be read once per day, with the Sun passing over the slit. The spectrometer measures the global solar spectrum with two 256-element photodiode arrays, one Si sensitive in the visible range (300 to 1100 nm), and a second InGaAs sensitive to the near infrared (900 to 1700 nm). This range covers 86 percent of the total energy from the Sun, with approximately 5-nm resolution. Each photodiode array has its own fiber-optic feed and grating. Although the purpose of the MATE is to gather data useful in designing solar arrays for Mars surface power systems, the radiometer and spectrometer measurements are expected to also provide important scientific data for characterizing the properties of suspended atmospheric dust. In addition to measuring the solar environment of Mars, MATE will measure the performance of five different individual solar cell types and two different solar cell strings, to qualify advanced solar cell types for future Mars missions. The MATE instrument, designed for the Mars-2001 Surveyor Lander mission, contains a capable suite of sensors that will provide both scientific information as well as important engineering data on the operation of solar power systems on Mars. MATE will characterize the intensity and spectrum of the solar radiation on Mars and measure the performance of solar arrays in the Mars environment. MATE flight hardware was built and tested at the NASA Glenn Research Center and is ready for flight.

Landis, Geoffrey A.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Strym: A Python Package for Real-time CAN Data Logging, Analysis and Visualization to Work with USB-CAN Interface

In this report, we describe a data analysis tool developed for decoding and analyzing vehicle data obtained from a passenger vehicle’s onboard controller area network (CAN) bus. The tool developed in this paper provides a timeseries framework to perform domain-specific analysis at scale when interpreting data from a vehicle or a collection of vehicles in light of how to design intelligent vehicle applications. The tool, called Strym, exploits the CAN bus mechanism of modern vehicles to capture data using commercially available CAN-to-USB hardware Comma.ai Panda devices, managed through open-source software Libpanda. Strym permits the decoding of vendor-specific CAN messages in a vehicle-agnostic manner. Through this, a researcher can characterize data throughput, assess data quality, and perform analyses. Such analyses are useful in a number of research such as studying human driving behavior in mixed-autonomy, new driver models, rare-event detection, traffic flow estimation, and custom control of vehicles.

Performance evaluation, Smart cities, Intelligent ↗
NASA NTRS2017

Transparent Conductive Ink for Additive Manufacturing

NASA analyzes, tests, packages, and fabricates electrical, electronic, and electromechanical (EEE) parts. Nanotechnology is listed in NASA's Technology Roadmap as a key area to invest for further development.1 This research project focused on using nanotechnology to improve electroluminescent lighting in terms of additive manufacturing and to increase energy efficiency. Specifically, this project's goal was to produce a conductive but transparent printable ink that can be sprayed on any surface for use as one of the electrodes in electroluminescent device design. This innovative work is known as thick film dielectric electroluminescent (TDEL) technology. TDEL devices are used for "backlighting, illumination, and identification due to their tunable color output, scalability, and efficiency" (I.K. Small, T.D. Rolin, and A.D. Shields, "3D Printed Electroluminescent Light Panels," NASA Fiscal Year 2017 Center Innovation Fund Proposal, unpublished data, 2017). These devices use a 'front-to-back' printing method, where the substrate is the transparent layer, and the dielectric and phosphor are layered on top. This project is a first step in the process of creating a 3D printable 'back-to-front' electroluminescent device. Back-to-front 3D-printed devices are beneficial because they can be printed onto different substrates and embedded in different surfaces, and the substrate is not required to be transparent, all because the light is emitted from the top surface through the transparent conductor. Advances in this area will help further development of printing TDEL devices on an array of different surfaces. Figure 1 demonstrates the layering of the two electrodes that are aligned in a parallel plate capacitor structure (I.K. Small, T.D. Rolin, and A.D. Shields, "3D Printed Electroluminescent Light Panels," NASA Fiscal Year 2017 Center Innovation Fund Proposal, unpublished data, 2017). Voltage is applied across the device, and the subsequent electron excitation results in light emission at the top layer.

Patlan, X. J.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Screening Metal Halide Perovskite Solar Modules for Premature Field Failures

Developing metal halide perovskite (MHP) photovoltaic (PV) devices into reliable large-area solar modules could accelerate global solar energy deployment. Many MHP devices are susceptible to degradation under light and elevated temperature (LT). Published research on LT testing is limited at the module level, and LT testing has not yet been developed for qualification testing of commercial PV products. This report assesses whether results of LT testing at moderately elevated temperatures correlate with those of field-tested modules from the same batch. Six batches of samples from four manufacturers are assessed. It is shown that modules with a robust package that can maintain over 80% of their peak efficiency during LT testing at 55 °C for 100 h are more likely to retain over 80% of their peak efficiency during outdoor operation for 10 weeks. This finding is a step towards developing a validated test protocol that could be incorporated into a qualification standard for the commercialization of MHP PV technologies.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

AI-Enhanced Co-Design for Next-Generation Microelectronics: Innovating Innovation (Workshop Report)

The Artificial Intelligence Enhanced Co-Design for Next Generation Microelectronics virtual workshop was held April 4-5, 2023, and attended by subject matter experts from universities, industry, and national laboratories. This was the third in a series of workshops to motivate the research community to identify and address major challenges facing microelectronics research and production. The 2023 workshop focused on a set of topics from materials to computing algorithms, and included discussions on relevant federal legislation and such as the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science Act (CHIPS Act) which was signed into law in the summer of 2022. Talks at the workshop included edge computing in radiation environments, new materials for neuromorphic computing, advanced packaging for microelectronics, and new AI techniques. We also received project updates from several of the Department of Energy (DOE) microelectronics co-design projects funded in the fall of 2021, and from three of the Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) that had been funded in the fall of 2022. The workshop also conducted a set of breakout discussions around the five principal research directions (PRDs) from the 2018 Department of Energy workshop report: 1) define innovative material, device, and architecture requirements driven by applications, algorithms, and software; 2) revolutionize memory and data storage; 3) re-imagine information flow unconstrained by interconnects; 4) redefine computing by leveraging unexploited physical phenomena; 5) reinvent the electricity grid through new materials, devices, and architectures. We tasked each breakout group to consider one primary PRD (and other PRDs as relevant topics arose during discussions) and to address questions such as whether the research community has embraced co-design as a methodology and whether new developments at any level of innovation from materials to programming models requires the research community to reevaluate the PRDs developed back in 2018.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS1975

Sensor equipment of the German earth scientific airplane program

The German airplane program for earth scientific research supports the work of a vast staff of earth scientists from universities and federal agencies. Due to their fields of interest, which are in oceanography, hydrology, geology, ecology, and forestry, five test areas were selected which are spread all over Germany. The sensor package, which was designed in accordance with the requirements of this group of scientists, will be installed in a DO 28 D2 type airplane. The sensor equipment consists of a series of 70-mm cameras having different film/filter combinations, a photogrammetric camera, an infrared radiometer, an 11-channel multispectral line scanner, a LANDSAT-compatible radiometer, and a complex avionic system. Along with the airplane, a truck will be equipped with a set of radiometers and other sensor devices for extensive ground-truth measurement; this also includes a cherry picker.

Seige, P.↗
DOE OSTI2022

VOLTTRON Modular Framework: Enabling flexible and scalable deployment solutions

VOLTTRON ™ is an open-source platform for distributed sensing and control. The platform provides services for collecting and storing data from buildings and devices and provides an environment for developing applications which interact with that data. The platform allows developers to build out their use cases by utilizing these frameworks and integrating new capabilities. To simplify the deployment of systems built on VOLTTRON, a new way of organizing the codebase is being explored. This document details these efforts through a new code repository layout for the VOLTTRON platform and services, and how this new layout provides targeted deployments using standard python deployment packages (wheels). In addition, this paper will discuss the development of third-party agents and how they can be integrated within the VOLTTRON ecosystem. Finally, we will discuss core platform development and direction for the modularized version of VOLTTRON.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
NASA NTRS2007

Structural Bus and Release Mechanisms on the ST5 Satellites: Summary and Status

The Space Technology 5 Mechanical System met the challenge of packaging a fully functional science and technology satellite system with its Deployer mechanism into a compact 0.07cu m volume. Three 25 kg satellites were orbited in constellation in March, 2006. The ST5 mechanical system is composed of 1) The Structural Bus; 2) Magnetometer Instrument Boom 3) Spacecraft Deployer Release Mechanism This system includes a highly integrated electronics enclosure as a multifunctional structure; a lightweight, magnetically clean Magnetometer Boom; the first use of Nitinol Shape-Memory Alloy trigger devices for deploying multiple spacecraft; an innovative compliant mount for the umbilical connector and a Deployer mechanism that imparts both separation velocity and mission spin rate to three constellation flying satellites These elements employed cutting-edge design and analysis tools, state-of-the-art testing facilities and proven engineering techniques to meet stringent performance criteria, enabling the mission s success.

Rossoni, Peter↗
NASA NTRS2013

WFL: Microwave Applications of Thin Ferroelectric Films

We have developed a family of tunable microwave circuits, operating from X- through Ka-band, based on laser ablated BaxSr1-xTiO films on lanthanum aluminate and magnesium oxide substrates. Circuits include voltage controlled oscillators, filters, phase shifters and antennas. A review of the basic theory of operation of these devices will be presented along with measured performance. Emphasis has been on low-loss phase shifters to enable a new phased array architecture. The critical role of phase shifter loss and transient response in reflectarray antennas will be discussed. The Ferroelectric Reflectarray Critical Components Space Experiment was launched on the penultimate Space Shuttle, STS-134, in May of 2011. It included a bank of ferroelectric phase shifters with two different stoichiometries as well as ancillary electronics. The experiment package and status will be reported. In addition, unusual results of a Van der Pauw measurement involving a ferroelectric film grown on buffered high resisitivity silicon will be discussed.

Romanofsky, Robert↗
DOE OSTI2024

Modular Quantum Processor with an All-to-All Reconfigurable Router

Superconducting qubits provide a promising approach to large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computing. However, qubit connectivity on a planar surface is typically restricted to only a few neighboring qubits. Achieving longer-range and more flexible connectivity, which is particularly appealing in light of recent developments in error-correcting codes, however, usually involves complex multilayer packaging and external cabling, which is resource intensive and can impose fidelity limitations. Here, we propose and realize a high-speed on-chip quantum processor that supports reconfigurable all-to-all coupling with a large on-off ratio. We implement the design in a four-node quantum processor, built with a modular design comprising a wiring substrate coupled to two separate qubit-bearing substrates, each including two single-qubit nodes. We use this device to demonstrate reconfigurable controlled-𝑍 gates across all qubit pairs, with a benchmarked average fidelity of 96.00% ± 0.08% and best fidelity of 97.14% ± 0.07%, limited mainly by dephasing in the qubits. We also generate multiqubit entanglement, distributed across the separate modules, demonstrating GHZ-3 and GHZ-4 states with fidelities of 88.15% ± 0.24% and 75.18% ± 0.11%, respectively. This approach promises efficient scaling to larger-scale quantum circuits and offers a pathway for implementing quantum algorithms and error-correction schemes that benefit from enhanced qubit connectivity.

Quantum circuits↗
DOE OSTI2020

Open Source Visualization and Analysis Platform for 3D Reconstructions of Materials by Transmission Electron Microscopy

Three-dimensional characterization of materials at the nano- and meso-scale has become possible with transmission and scanning transmission electron microscopes (S/TEM). Its importance has extended to a wide class of nanomaterials such as hydrogen fuel cells, solar cells, industrial catalysts, new battery materials and semiconductor devices, as well as spanning high-tech industry, universities, and national labs. While capable instrumentation is abundant, this rapidly expanding demand for high-resolution tomography is bottlenecked by software that is instead tailored for lower-dose, biological applications and not optimized for higher-resolution materials applications. Existing tomography fails to utilize the chemical information provided by S/TEM spectrometers. To address this problem, this project delivered a scalable, fully functional, freely-distributable, open Source materials tomography package with a modern user interface that enables automated acquisition, alignment, and real-time reconstruction of raw tomography data, and provides advanced segmentation, three-dimensional chemical visualization and analysis optimized for materials applications. It has established an extendable framework capable of automation for high-throughput for the tomography of materials from data acquisition to visualization. Phase I and II delivered a full-featured, cross-platform, clean and integrated application for S/TEM materials tomography. It can read projection data from the microscope, with graphical tools for alignment of data, tomographic reconstruction, segmentation, and visualization of the reconstructed 3D volume. The entire pipeline can be saved to an XML state file, enabling fully reproducible data processing and analysis with a full Python environment for the development of custom algorithms, processing, and analysis requirements. Phase IIB extended the application to provide real-time tomographic reconstruction, "live updates" as data is processed, analysis of big data, and multi-channel tomography. Here, quantitative assessment of nanomaterials can occur as data is being recorded on a 3D visualization platform that accommodates additional information from multiple channels. We provide unmatched high-throughput tomography, where the complete tomographic pipeline from measurement to 3D visualization can occur rapidly. The project was extended to offer capabilities for micro-CT, X-ray, neutron, focused ion beam, atomic electron tomography and atom probe tomography. With over 600 transmission electron microscopes worldwide and approximately 50 coming online each year, the demand and impact of an open-source tomography tool is large. Significant opportunities exist in high-tech industry, universities, and national labs to enable or enhance three-dimensional imaging at the nanoscale and bring automated high-throughput approaches that will accelerate progress in materials characterization and metrology. The project supports a service based business model by enabling lab-specific acquisition and processing customization and integration-support and development that will be provided into Phase III and beyond.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
NASA NTRS1975

Battery peak charge voltage monitor for dual air density satellite

A battery peak charge voltage monitor was developed for use on the dual air density satellite (DADS). This device retains a reading of the maximum voltage reached by the spacecraft battery during periods of charging, and makes it available during periods of data transmission. The monitor is connected across the battery and operates solely from the battery; it is powered continuously with quiescent input current of only 3 milliamperes. Standard integrated circuits and a thin-film resistor network are utilized. The monitor occupies approximately 40 square centimeters of a printed-circuit board within a larger electronic package.

Shull, T. A.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Phoebe: a high-performance framework for solving phonon and electron Boltzmann transport equations

Understanding the electrical and thermal transport properties of materials is critical to the design of electronics, sensors, and energy conversion devices. Computational modeling can accurately predict material properties but, in order to be reliable, requires accurate descriptions of electron and phonon states and their interactions. While first-principles methods are capable of describing the energy spectrum of each carrier, using them to compute transport properties is still a formidable task, both computationally demanding and memory intensive, requiring integration of fine microscopic scattering details for estimation of macroscopic transport properties. To address this challenge, we present Phoebe—a newly developed software package that includes the effects of electron–phonon, phonon–phonon, boundary, and isotope scattering in computations of electrical and thermal transport properties of materials with a variety of available methods and approximations. This open source C++ code combines MPI-OpenMP hybrid parallelization with GPU acceleration and distributed memory structures to manage computational cost, allowing Phoebe to effectively take advantage of contemporary computing infrastructures. We demonstrate that Phoebe accurately and efficiently predicts a wide range of transport properties, opening avenues for accelerated computational analysis of complex crystals.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
NASA NTRS1997

SiC-Based Gas Sensors

Electronic grade Silicon Carbide (SiC) is a ceramic material which can operate as a semiconductor at temperatures above 600 C. Recently, SiC semiconductors have been used in Schottky diode gas sensor structures. These sensors have been shown to be functional at temperatures significantly above the normal operating range of Si-based devices. SiC sensor operation at these higher temperatures allows detection of gases such as hydrocarbons which are not detectable at lower temperatures. This paper discusses the development of SiC-based Schottky diode gas sensors for the detection of hydrogen, hydrocarbons, and nitrogen oxides (NO(x)). Sensor designs for these applications are discussed. High sensitivity is observed for the hydrogen and hydrocarbon sensors using Pd on SiC Schottky diodes while the NO(x) sensors are still under development. A prototype sensor package has been fabricated which allows high temperature operation in a room temperature ambient by minimizing heat loss to that ambient. It is concluded that SiC-based gas sensors have considerable potential in a variety of gas sensing applications.

Chen, Liang-Yu↗
NASA NTRS2015

Solid State Ultracapacitor

NASA analyzes, tests, packages, and fabricates electrical, electronic, and electromechanical (EEE) parts used in space vehicles. One area that NASA wishes to advance is energy storage and delivery. Currently, space vehicles use rechargeable batteries that utilize silver zinc or lithium ion electrochemical processes. These current state-of-the-art rechargeable batteries cannot be rapidly charged, contain harmful chemicals, and suffer from early wear-out mechanisms. A solid state ultracapacitor is an EEE part that offers significant advantages over current electrochemical and electrolytic devices. The objective of this research is to develop an internal barrier layer ultracapacitor (IBLC) using novel dielectric materials as a battery replacement with a focus on these advantages: longer life, lower mass-toweight ratio, rapid charging, on-demand pulse power, improved on-pad standby time without maintenance, and environmental friendliness. The approach is unique in two areas. A deposition technique is used that has been shown to produce a more uniformly coated nanoparticle than sol-gel, which has resulted in colossal permittivities. These particles are then distributed in an ink formulation developed at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and deposited utilizing a 3D aerosol jet technique. This additive manufacturing technique controls layer thickness, resulting in extremely large capacitance and energy density.

Rolin, Terry D.↗