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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 829 records · Page 46
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1997

Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Workshop Preliminary Results

In August, 1997, a NASA workshop was held to assess the prospects emerging from physics that might lead to creating the ultimate breakthroughs in space transportation: propulsion that requires no propellant mass, attaining the maximum transit speeds physically possible, and breakthrough methods of energy production to power such devices. Because these propulsion goals are presumably far from fruition, a special emphasis was to identify affordable, near-term, and credible research that could make measurable progress toward these propulsion goals. Experiments and theories were discussed regarding the coupling of gravity and electromagnetism, vacuum fluctuation energy, warp drives and wormholes, and superluminal quantum tunneling. Preliminary results of this workshop are presented, along with the status of the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics program that conducted this workshop.

Millis, Marc G.↗
DOE OSTI2022

GenASiS Basics: Object-oriented utilitarian functionality for large-scale physics simulations (Version 4)

GenASiS Basics provides modern Fortran classes furnishing extensible object-oriented utilitarian functionality for large-scale physics simulations on distributed memory supercomputers. This functionality includes physical units and constants; display to the screen or standard output device; message passing; I/O to disk; and runtime parameter management and usage statistics. Herein, this revision—Version 4 of Basics—includes a name change and additions to functionality, including the facilitation of direct communication between GPUs.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2023

Long-Lived and Bright Biexcitons in Quantum Dots with Parabolic Band Potentials

Multiple exciton physics in semiconductor nanocrystals play an important role in optoelectronic devices. Here, this work investigates radially alloyed CdZnSe/CdS nanocrystals with suppressed Auger recombination due to the spatial separation of carriers, which also underpins their performance in optical gain and scintillation experiments. Due to suppressed Auger recombination, the biexciton lifetime is greater than 10 ns, much longer than most nanocrystals. The samples show optical gain, amplified spontaneous emission, and lasing at thresholds <2 excitons per particle. They also show broad gain bandwidth (>500 meV) encompassing 4 amplified spontaneous emission bands. Similarly enabled by slowed multiple exciton relaxation, the samples display strong performance in scintillating films under X-ray illumination. The CdZnSe/CdS samples have fast radioluminescence rise (<80 ps) and decay times (<5 ns), light yields up to 6700 photonsMeV -1 , and the demonstrated capacity for incorporation into large area films for scintillation imaging.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2023

Encoding multistate charge order and chirality in endotaxial heterostructures

Abstract High-density phase change memory (PCM) storage is proposed for materials with multiple intermediate resistance states, which have been observed in 1 T -TaS 2 due to charge density wave (CDW) phase transitions. However, the metastability responsible for this behavior makes the presence of multistate switching unpredictable in TaS 2 devices. Here, we demonstrate the fabrication of nanothick verti-lateral H -TaS 2 /1 T -TaS 2 heterostructures in which the number of endotaxial metallic H -TaS 2 monolayers dictates the number of resistance transitions in 1 T -TaS 2 lamellae near room temperature. Further, we also observe optically active heterochirality in the CDW superlattice structure, which is modulated in concert with the resistivity steps, and we show how strain engineering can be used to nucleate these polytype conversions. This work positions the principle of endotaxial heterostructures as a promising conceptual framework for reliable, non-volatile, and multi-level switching of structure, chirality, and resistance.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2024

Celeritas R&D Report: Accelerating Geant4

Celeritas is a new Monte Carlo (MC) detector simulation code designed for computationally intensive applications on high-performance heterogeneous architectures. In the past two years Celeritas has advanced from prototyping a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)-based single physics model in infinite medium to implementing a full set of electromagnetic (EM) physics processes in complex geometries. The current release of Celeritas, version 0.4, has incorporated full device-based navigation, an event loop in the presence of magnetic fields, and detector hit scoring. New functionality incorporates a scheduler to offload electromagnetic physics to the GPU within a Geant4-driven simulation, enabling straightforward integration of Celeritas into the high energy physics (HEP) experimental frameworks CMSSW and ATLAS FullSimLight. On the Perlmutter supercomputer, Celeritas performs EM physics between 3× and 18× faster using the machine’s Nvidia GPUs compared to using only CPUs, corresponding to an electrical power efficiency up to a factor of 5. When running a multithreaded Geant4 ATLAS test beam application with full hadronic physics, using Celeritas to accelerate the EM physics results in an overall simulation speedup of 1.7–2.2× on GPU and 1.2× on CPU. In a CMS test application using tt¯ events and the prototype Run 4 configuration, compared to Geant4 CPU, Celeritas with a Nvidia A100 improves overall throughput up to a factor of 2.7× but cannot be efficiently shared with more than 8 cores.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS1998

NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program

In 1996, NASA established the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics program to seek the ultimate breakthroughs in space transportation: propulsion that requires no propellant mass, propulsion that attains the maximum transit speeds physically possible, and breakthrough methods of energy production to power such devices. Topics of interest include experiments and theories regarding the coupling of gravity and electromagnetism, vacuum fluctuation energy, warp drives and worm-holes, and superluminal quantum effects. Because these propulsion goals are presumably far from fruition, a special emphasis is to identify affordable, near-term, and credible research that could make measurable progress toward these propulsion goals. The methods of the program and the results of the 1997 workshop are presented. This Breakthrough Propulsion Physics program, managed by Lewis Research Center, is one part of a comprehensive, long range Advanced Space Transportation Plan managed by Marshall Space Flight Center.

Millis, Marc G.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Electrically-driven IMT and volatile memristor behavior in NdNiO 3 films

Abstract Transition metal oxides with insulator-metal transitions (IMTs) are uniquely suited for volatile memristor devices that mimic the spiking of biological neurons. Unlike most non-volatile memristors, which often operate via ion migration into filaments, volatile devices utilize a reversible phase change that returns to a ground state in the absence of applied stimulus. In these devices, Joule heating triggers the IMT and changes the bulk resistivity rather than influencing conduction through defects, as in previous studies. This volatile resistive switching behavior has previous been leveraged in niobium and vanadium oxides, but not in rare-earth nickelates, despite their tunable transition temperatures. This study demonstrates an electrically driven IMT in the prototypical rare-earth nickelate, NdNiO 3 , in large area devices. While previous work examining the electrically-driven IMT in NdNiO 3 suggests defect-dominated conduction, this study shows clear s-type negative differential resistance (NDR) consistent with temperature-dependent resistivity measurements. The NDR peak-to-valley voltage scales linearly with temperature as expected for conductivity pathways dominated by bulk IMT behavior. Unlike other transition metal oxides, which are modeled using the insulator-metal phase fraction as the internal state variable, a thermoelectric model with temperature as the internal state variable is found to more accurately describe the current–voltage characteristic of NdNiO 3 volatile memristors. Overall, we report the synthesis, fabrication, and characterization of NdNiO 3 volatile memristors with resistivity dominated by bulk-like IMT behavior which is scalable and not dependent upon oxygen vacancy migration or defect mediated conduction pathways.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Improved microwave SQUID multiplexer readout using a kinetic-inductance traveling-wave parametric amplifier

We report on the use of a kinetic-inductance traveling-wave parametric amplifier (KITWPA) as the first amplifier in the readout chain of a microwave superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) multiplexer (μmux). This μmux is designed to multiplex signals from arrays of low temperature detectors, such as superconducting transition-edge sensor microcalorimeters. When modulated with a periodic flux-ramp to linearize the SQUID response, the flux noise improves, on average, from 1.6 μ $\Phi$ 0 /$\sqrt{Hz}$ with the KITWPA off to 0.77 μ $\Phi$ 0 /$\sqrt{Hz}$ with the KITWPA on. When statically biasing the μmux to the maximally flux-sensitive point, the flux noise drops from 0.45 μ $\Phi$ 0 /$\sqrt{Hz}$ to 0.2 μ $\Phi$ 0 /$\sqrt{Hz}$⁠. We validate this new readout scheme by coupling a transition-edge sensor microcalorimeter to the μmux and detecting background radiation. In conclusion, the combination of μmux and KITWPA provides a variety of new capabilities including improved detector sensitivity and more efficient bandwidth utilization.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2022

Tilted spin current generated by the collinear antiferromagnet ruthenium dioxide

Symmetry plays a central role in determining the polarization of spin currents induced by electric fields. It also influences how these spin currents generate spin-transfer torques in magnetic devices. Here, we show that an out-of-plane damping-like torque can be generated in ruthenium oxide (RuO 2 )/permalloy devices when the Néel vector of the collinear antiferromagnet RuO 2 is canted relative to the sample plane. By measuring characteristic changes in all three components of the electric-field-induced torque vector as a function of the angle of the electric field relative to the crystal axes, we find that the RuO 2 generates a spin current with a well-defined tilted spin orientation that is approximately parallel to the Néel vector. A maximum out-of-plane damping-like spin torque efficiency per unit electric field of 7±1 × 10 3 Ω -1 m -1 is measured at room temperature. Here, the observed angular dependence indicates that this is an antiferromagnetic spin Hall effect with symmetries that are distinct from other mechanisms of spin-current generation reported in antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic materials.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2020

FPGAs-as-a-Service Toolkit (FaaST)

Computing needs for high energy physics are already intensive and are expected to increase drastically in the coming years. In this context, heterogeneous computing, specifically as-a-service computing, has the potential for significant gains over traditional computing models. Although previous studies and packages in the field of heterogeneous computing have focused on GPUs as accelerators, FPGAs are an extremely promising option as well. A series of workflows are developed to establish the performance capabilities of FPGAs as a service. Multiple different devices and a range of algorithms for use in high energy physics are studied. For a small, dense network, the throughput can be improved by an order of magnitude with respect to GPUs as a service. For large convolutional networks, the throughput is found to be comparable to GPUs as a service. This work represents the first open-source FPGAs-as-a-service toolkit.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2023

Wafer-Scale Synthesis of 2D Materials by an Amorphous Phase-Mediated Crystallization Approach

The interest in the wafer-scale growth of two-dimensional (2D) materials, including transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), has been rising for transitioning from lab-scale devices to commercial-scale systems. Among various synthesis techniques, physical vapor deposition, such as pulsed laser deposition (PLD), has shown promise for the wafer-scale growth of 2D materials. However, due to the high volatility of chalcogen atoms (e.g., S and Se), films deposited by PLD usually suffer from a lack of stoichiometry and chalcogen deficiency. To mitigate this issue, excess chalcogen is necessary during the deposition, which results in problems like uniformity or not being repeatable. This study demonstrates a condensed-phase or amorphous phase-mediated crystallization (APMC) approach for the wafer-scale synthesis of 2D materials. This method uses a room-temperature PLD process for the deposition and formation of amorphous precursors with controlled thicknesses, followed by a post-deposition crystallization process to convert the amorphous materials to crystalline structures. This approach maintains the stoichiometry of the deposited materials throughout the deposition and crystallization process and enables the large-scale synthesis of crystalline 2D materials (e.g., MoS 2 and WSe 2 ) on Si/SiO 2 substrates, which is critical for future wafer-scale electronics. We show that the thickness of the layers can be digitally controlled by the number of laser pulses during the PLD phase. Optical spectroscopy is used to monitor the crystallization dynamics of amorphous layers as a function of annealing temperature. The crystalline quality, domain sizes, and the number of layers were explored using nanoscale and atomistic characterization (e.g., AFM, STEM, and EDS) along with electrical characterization to explore process–structure–performance relationships. Finally, this growth technique is a promising method that could potentially be adopted in conventional semiconductor industries for wafer-scale manufacturing of next-generation electronic and optoelectronic devices.

2D electronics↗
DOE OSTI2020

THz-range Faraday rotation in the Weyl semimetal candidate Co 2 TiGe

The Co 2 family of ferromagnetic Heusler alloys has attracted interest due to their fully spin-polarized nature, making them ideal for applications in spintronic devices. More recently, the existence of room temperature time-reversal-breaking Weyl nodes near the Fermi level was predicted and confirmed in these systems. As a result of the presence of these Weyl nodes, these systems possess a non-zero momentum space Berry curvature that can dramatically influence transport properties such as the anomalous Hall effect. One of these candidate compounds is Co 2 TiGe. Recently, high-quality molecular beam epitaxy-grown thin films of Co 2 TiGe have become available. In this work, we present a THz-range measurement of MBE-grown Co 2 TiGe films. We measure the THz-range Faraday rotation, which can be understood as a measure of the anomalous Hall effect. We supplement this work with electronic band-structure calculations showing that the principal contribution to the anomalous Hall effect in this material stems from the Berry curvature of the material. Overall, our work shows that this class of Heusler materials shows promise for Weyl semimetal based spintronics.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2026

Ferroelectric Fractals: Switching Mechanism of Wurtzite AlN

The advent of wurtzite ferroelectrics is enabling new ferroelectric devices for computer memory that have the potential to bypass the von Neumann bottleneck due to their robust polarization and silicon compatibility. However, the atomistic switching mechanism of wurtzites is still undetermined due to the limitations of density functional theory simulation size and experimental temporal and spatial resolution. Thus, physics-informed materials engineering to reduce coercive field and breakdown in these devices has been limited. In this work, the atomistic mechanism of domain wall migration and domain growth in aluminum nitride-based wurtzites is uncovered using molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations. We reveal the anomalous switching mechanism of fast 1D single columns of atoms propagating from a slow-moving 2D fractallike domain wall. We find that the critical nucleus is a single aluminum ion that breaks its bond with one nitrogen and bonds to another nitrogen; this creates a cascade that flips atoms directly only in the same column, due to the extreme locality (sharpness) of the domain walls in wurtzites. We further show how the fractallike shape of the domain wall in the 2D plane breaks assumptions in the Kolmogorov, Avrami, and Ishibashi (KAI) model and leads to the anomalously fast switching in wurtzite structured ferroelectrics.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2021

A Review of Current Research Trends in Power-Electronic Innovations in Cyber–Physical Systems

Here, in this article, a broad overview of the current research trends in power-electronic innovations in cyber–physical systems (CPSs) is presented. The recent advances in semiconductor device technologies, control architectures, and communication methodologies have enabled researchers to develop integrated smart CPSs that can cater to the emerging requirements of smart grids, renewable energy, electric vehicles, trains, ships, the Internet of Things (IoT), and so on. The topics presented in this article include novel power-distribution architectures, protection techniques considering large renewable integration in smart grids, wireless charging in electric vehicles, simultaneous power and information transmission, multihop network-based coordination, power technologies for renewable energy and smart transformer, CPS reliability, transactive smart railway grid, and real-time simulation of shipboard power systems. It is anticipated that the research trends presented in this article will provide a timely and useful overview to the power-electronics researchers with broad applications in CPSs.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2021

Charge collection and trapping mechanisms in hexagonal boron nitride epilayers

Understanding charge collection and trapping mechanisms is crucial for using hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) as active layers for many photonic and electronic devices such as deep UV detectors and emitters, neutron detectors, and single photon emitters. Charge collection and trapping mechanisms in h-BN epilayers have been investigated by probing impurity related optical emissions under an applied electrical field. Our results suggested that the existence of oxygen impurities affects the charge collection efficiency and results in an additional emission peak at 3.75 eV, corresponding to a donor-acceptor pair (DAP) recombination involving O N (oxygen residing on the nitrogen site) donors and the V B -H (boron vacancy bonded with hydrogen complex) deep level acceptors. Experimental results further revealed that the applied electric field induces an anti-correlation between the emission intensity of the DAP transition and the charge collection efficiency from which it was shown that it is possible to find an expression to quantitatively measure the maximum charge collection efficiency in h-BN. The results introduce not only a coherent picture for the relationship between common impurities in h-BN and charge collection and trapping mechanisms but also useful insights into possible approaches to improve the quality, purity, and charge collection of the h-BN epilayers.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2023

CYDRES: CYber Defense and REsilient System for securing grid-interactive efficient buildings

Smart buildings, especially Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings (GEBs), suffer from cyber-attacks and physical faults due to the integration of a large number of sensors and controls, connected devices, and associated communication networks. This study demonstrated a real-time advanced building resilient platform, called CYber Defense and REsilient System (CYDRES), which is deployable for existing and emerging Building Automation Systems (BASs). CYDRES aims to empower GEBs with cyber-attack-immune capabilities through multi-layer prevention and adaptation mechanisms to monitor, detect, and respond to cyber-attacks and physical operational faults. CYDRES is demonstrated through real-time experiments in a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) testbed.

Building automation system, Cyber-attacks, Physica↗
DOE OSTI2026

Modulating surface acoustic wave generation through superconductivity

Surface acoustic waves (SAWs), with their five orders-of-magnitude slower propagation velocity, allow for considerably shorter wavelengths at the same frequency compared to electromagnetic waves. The short wavelengths allow for device miniaturization and on-chip integration. The generic design of these devices involves piezoelectric substrates with comb-like arrays of Al or Au electrodes known as interdigitated transducers (IDTs) deposited on the surface. However, Al and Au both have shortcomings at the cryogenic temperatures required for quantum applications, namely, the formation of two-level systems and the lack of superconductivity perpetuating Ohmic losses, respectively. In this work, SAWs are generated in the high-MHz to low-GHz range using niobium nitride (NbN) interdigitated transducers and Bragg reflectors. We demonstrate the fabrication of acoustic devices through photolithography and reactive ion etching. The sharp transition between superconducting and normal states and the corresponding change in SAW transmission allows for fine control of the “on” (superconducting) and “off” (normal) states of NbN, with a ΔT = 1 K separating the transmission minimum and maximum. We demonstrate a 16× difference in transmission between the “on” and “off” states of the device. The SAW transmission behavior mirrors the change in resistance of NbN at its T c . These findings open up new possibilities for the integration of NbN SAW resonators into existing quantum architectures based on NbN and a method for adjusting transmission properties independent of applied voltage.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2021

Magnetic skyrmion diode: Unidirectional skyrmion motion via symmetry breaking of potential energy barriers

In this work, we realize a magnetic skyrmion diode operated by a unidirectional skyrmion transport that flows in only one direction, which is highly significant for information processing in spintronic and nanoelectronic devices. We easily control the skyrmion transport by engineering asymmetric shapes of geometric structures. Here, we present a simple method to describe the underlying mechanism behind the unidirectional skyrmion transport by characterizing the topography of potential energy surfaces from a purely geometric perspective. Our approach enables a deeper physical insight into skyrmion transport manipulation and efficient design of skyrmion-based devices in geometric structures.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗