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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 1,459 records · Page 81
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2008

On-Wafer Measurement of a Silicon-Based CMOS VCO at 324 GHz

The world s first silicon-based complementary metal oxide/semiconductor (CMOS) integrated-circuit voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) operating in a frequency range around 324 GHz has been built and tested. Concomitantly, equipment for measuring the performance of this oscillator has been built and tested. These accomplishments are intermediate steps in a continuing effort to develop low-power-consumption, low-phase-noise, electronically tunable signal generators as local oscillators for heterodyne receivers in submillimeter-wavelength (frequency > 300 GHz) scientific instruments and imaging systems. Submillimeter-wavelength imaging systems are of special interest for military and law-enforcement use because they could, potentially, be used to detect weapons hidden behind clothing and other opaque dielectric materials. In comparison with prior submillimeter- wavelength signal generators, CMOS VCOs offer significant potential advantages, including great reductions in power consumption, mass, size, and complexity. In addition, there is potential for on-chip integration of CMOS VCOs with other CMOS integrated circuitry, including phase-lock loops, analog- to-digital converters, and advanced microprocessors.

Samoska, Lorene↗
NASA NTRS2016

Miniature Packaging Concept for LNAs in the 200-300 GHz Range

In this work, we describe new miniaturized low noise amplifier modules which we developed for incorporation in small-scale satellites or Cubesats, and which exhibit similar or better performance compared to previously reported LNAs in the literature. We have targeted the WR4 (170-260 GHz) and WR3 (220-325 GHz) waveguide bands for the module development. The modules include two different methods of E-plane probes which have been developed for low loss, and stability at high frequencies. MMIC LNAs were also developed for these frequency ranges and fabricated in Northrop Grumman Corporation's 35 nm InP HEMT technology, and we have experimentally verified that noise performance is lower than reported in prior work. The best results include a miniature LNA module with 550K noise at 224 GHz, and a wideband LNA module with 15 dB gain from 230-280 GHz.

WR4↗
DOE OSTI2018

Theoretical Investigation of Relaxation Dynamics in Au 38 (SH) 24 Thiolate-Protected Gold Nanoclusters

A subtle change in the electronic structure of thiolate protected noble nanoparticles can result distinctive relaxation dynamics. Thus, relaxation dynamics investigations on different sizes and structures of thiolate protected gold nanocluster will reveal their physical and chemical properties for further development of catalytic applications. In this work, we performed nonradiative relaxation dynamics of the Au 38 (SH) 24 nanocluster theoretically to describe electron relaxation dynamics. The core and higher excited states involving semiring motifs lying in the energy range 0.00-2.01 eV are investigated using the time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT). The surface hopping method with decoherence correction, augmented with a real-time approach to DFT technique is used to assess the quantum dynamics. The Au 23 core relaxations were found to be in a picosecond timescale in the range of 2.0 – 8.2 ps. The higher excited states that consist of core- semiring mixed or semiring states gave ultrafast decay time constants in the range of 0.6 - 4.9 ps. Our calculations predicted that the slowest individual state decay of S11 or the slowest combined S 11 -S 12 , S 1 -S 2 -S 6 -S 7 and S 4 -S 5 - S 9 -S 10 decay involves intracore relaxations. The analysis of the phonon spectral densities and the ground state vibrational frequencies suggested that the low frequency (25 cm -1 ) coherent phonon emission reported experimentally could be the bending of the biicosahedral Au 23 core or the “fan blade twisting” mode of two icosahedral units occurring in a similar frequency range.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
NASA NTRS1974

The study of electrical conduction mechanisms

The dielectric response of lunar fines 74241,2 is presented in the audio-frequency range and under lunarlike conditions. Results suggest that volatiles are released during storage and transport of the lunar sample. Apparently, subsequent absorption of volatiles on the sample surface alter its dielectric response. The assumed volatile influence disappear after evacuation. A comparison of the dielectric properties of lunar and terrestrial materials as a function of density, temperature, and frequency indicates that if the lunar simulator analyzed were completely devoid of atmospheric moisture it would present dielectric losses smaller than those of the lunar sample. It is concluded that density prevails over temperature as the controlling factor of dielectric permittivity in the lunar regolith and that dielectric losses vary slowly with depth.

Morrison, H. F.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Observational features of field line resonances excited by solar wind pressure variations on 4 September 1984

The purpose of the study is to establish the most probable excitation mechanism of the magnetic storm occurred after an inverse sudden impulse on September 4, 1984. Geomagnetic pulsations in the Pc5-frequency range observed at magnetometer stations are evaluated. Attention is focused on two events of the enhanced activity: for the first one, conjugate observations on the ground are assessed and then compared with satellite-based observations on adjacent field lines; for the second event two hours later, data from an extended azimuthal range is employed. It is pointed out that the observations are consistent with the theory of filed-line resonance, and may be interpreted as excitations caused by pressure variations in the solar wind. Both magnetopause-surface waves and cavity resonances are excited; the cavity mode drives toroidal field-line oscillations at locations where its frequency matches the resonance frequency of the field lines.

Warnecke, J.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Acoustical evaluation of the NASA Lewis 9 by 15 foot low speed wind tunnel

The test section of the NASA Lewis 9- by 15-Foot Low Speed Wind Tunnel was acoustically treated to allow the measurement of acoustic sources located within the tunnel test section under simulated free field conditions. The treatment was designed for high sound absorption at frequencies above 250 Hz and to withstand tunnel airflow velocities up to 0.2 Mach. Evaluation tests with no tunnel airflow were conducted in the test section to assess the performance of the installed treatment. This performance would not be significantly affected by low speed airflow. Time delay spectrometry tests showed that interference ripples in the incident signal resulting from reflections occurring within the test section average from 1.7 dB to 3.2 dB wide over a 500 to 5150 Hz frequency range. Late reflections, from upstream and downstream of the test section, were found to be insignificant at the microphone measuring points. For acoustic sources with low directivity characteristics, decay with distance measurements in the test section showed that incident free field behavior can be measured on average with an accuracy of +/- 1.5 dB or better at source frequencies from 400 Hz to 10 kHz. The free field variations are typically much smaller with an omnidirectional source.

Dahl, Milo D.↗
NASA NTRS1994

The submillimeter-wave spectrum of propionitrile (C2H5CN)

The laboratory millimeter-wave and submillimeter-wave rotational spectrum of propionitrile (ethyl cyanide, C2H5CN) in its ground vibrational state has been extended through J = 70 and K(sub a) = 36. Transitions measured in this study are in the frequency range 250-610 GHz. A fit of 952 transitions including 732 new measurements to a Watson A-reduced Hamiltonian has yielded a complete set of quartic and sextic distortion constants, in addition to six octic distortion constants. Internal rotation and hyperfine splittings have not been resolved, so they are not included in the analysis. Predicted transition frequencies for a large number of additional transitions of interest to radioastronomers are provided.

Pearson, J. C.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Inlet Noise Reduction by Shielding for the Blended-Wing-Body Airplane

Noise shielding benefits associated with an advanced unconventional subsonic transport concept, the Blended-Wing-Body, were studied using a 4- percent scale, 3-engine nacelle model. The study was conducted in the Anechoic Noise Research Facility at NASA Langley Research Center. A high- frequency, wideband point source was placed inside the nacelles of the center engine and one of the side engines in order to simulate broadband engine noise. The sound field of the model was measured with a rotating microphone array that was moved to various stations along the model axis and with a fixed array of microphones that was erected behind the model. Ten rotating microphones were traversed a total of 22 degrees in 2-degree increments. Seven fixed microphones covered an arc that extended from a point in the exhaust exit plane of the center engine (and directly below its centerline) to a point 30 degrees above the jet centerline. While no attempt was made to simulate the noise emission characteristics of an aircraft engine, the model source was intended to radiate sound in a frequency range encompassing 1, 2, and 3 times the blade passage of a typical full-scale engine. In this study, the Blended-Wing-Body model was found to provide significant shielding of inlet noise. In particular, noise radiated downward into the forward sector was reduced by 20 to 25 dB overall in the full-scale frequencies from 2000 to 4000 Hz, decreasing to 10 dB or less at the lower frequencies. Also, it was observed that noise associated with the exhaust radiates into the sector directly below the model downstream to reduce shielding efficiency.

Clark, Lorenzo R.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Charge Analyzer Responsive Local Oscillations

The first transatlantic radio transmission, demonstrated by Marconi in December of 1901, revealed the essential role of the ionosphere for radio communications. This ionized layer of the upper atmosphere controls the amount of radio power transmitted through, reflected off of, and absorbed by the atmospheric medium. Low-frequency radio signals can propagate long distances around the globe via repeated reflections off of the ionosphere and the Earth's surface. Higher frequency radio signals can punch through the ionosphere to be received at orbiting satellites. However, any turbulence in the ionosphere can distort these signals, compromising the performance or even availability of space-based communication and navigations systems. The physics associated with this distortion effect is analogous to the situation when underwater images are distorted by convecting air bubbles. In fact, these ionospheric features are often called 'plasma bubbles' since they exhibit some of the similar behavior as underwater air bubbles. These events, instigated by solar and geomagnetic storms, can cause communication and navigation outages that last for hours. To help understand and predict these outages, a world-wide community of space scientists and technologists are devoted to researching this topic. One aspect of this research is to develop instruments capable of measuring the ionospheric plasma bubbles. Figure 1 shows a photo of the Charge Analyzer Responsive to Local Oscillations (CARLO), a new instrument under development at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). It is a frequency-domain ion spectrum analyzer designed to measure the distributions of ionospheric turbulence from 1 Hz to 10 kHz (i.e., spatial scales from a few kilometers down to a few centimeters). This frequency range is important since it focuses on turbulence scales that affect VHF/UHF satellite communications, GPS systems, and over-the-horizon radar systems. CARLO is based on the flight-proven Plasma Local Anomalous Noise Environment (PLANE) instrument, previously flown on a U.S. Air Force low-Earth orbiting satellite, which successfully measured ion turbulence in five frequency decades from 0.1 Hz to 10 kHz (fig 2).

Krause, Linda Habash↗
NASA NTRS1992

New approach to the design of Schottky barrier diodes for THz mixers

Near-ideal GaAs Schottky barrier diodes especially designed for mixing applications in the THz frequency range are presented. A diode fabrication process for submicron diodes with near-ideal electrical and noise characteristics is described. This process is based on the electrolytic pulse etching of GaAs in combination with an in-situ platinum plating for the formation of the Schottky contacts. Schottky barrier diodes with a diameter of 1 micron fabricated by the process have already shown excellent results in a 650 GHz waveguide mixer at room temperature. A conversion loss of 7.5 dB and a mixer noise temperature of less than 2000 K have been obtained at an intermediate frequency of 4 GHz. The optimization of the diode structure and the technology was possible due to the development of a generalized Schottky barrier diode model which is valid also at high current densities. The common diode design and optimization is discussed on the basis of the classical theory. However, the conventional fomulas are valid only in a limited forward bias range corresponding to currents much smaller than the operating currents under submillimeter mixing conditions. The generalized new model takes into account not only the phenomena occurring at the junction such as current dependent recombination and drift/diffusion velocities, but also mobility and electron temperature variations in the undepleted epi-layer. Calculated diode I/V and noise characteristics are in excellent agreement with the measured values. Thus, the model offers the possibility of optimizing the diode structure and predicting the diode performance under mixing conditions at THz frequencies.

Jelenski, A.↗
DOE OSTI2023

Impact of crowding on the diversity of expanding populations

Crowding effects critically impact the self-organization of densely packed cellular assemblies, such as biofilms, solid tumors, and developing tissues. When cells grow and divide, they push each other apart, remodeling the structure and extent of the population’s range. Recent work has shown that crowding has a strong impact on the strength of natural selection. However, the impact of crowding on neutral processes, which controls the fate of new variants as long as they are rare, remains unclear. Here, we quantify the genetic diversity of expanding microbial colonies and uncover signatures of crowding in the site frequency spectrum. By combining Luria–Delbrück fluctuation tests, lineage tracing in a novel microfluidic incubator, cell-based simulations, and theoretical modeling, we find that the majority of mutations arise behind the expanding frontier, giving rise to clones that are mechanically “pushed out” of the growing region by the proliferating cells in front. These excluded-volume interactions result in a clone-size distribution that solely depends on where the mutation first arose relative to the front and is characterized by a simple power law for low-frequency clones. Our model predicts that the distribution depends on a single parameter—the characteristic growth layer thickness—and hence allows estimation of the mutation rate in a variety of crowded cellular populations. Combined with previous studies on high-frequency mutations, our finding provides a unified picture of the genetic diversity in expanding populations over the whole frequency range and suggests a practical method to assess growth dynamics by sequencing populations across spatial scales.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Application of Superconducting Cavities as Ultra-Sensitive RF Photon Detectors

Superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities are the world’s most efficient engineered oscillators, and they have long been employed for extremely high efficiency transfer of energy to beams of charged particles. Decades of R&D for particle accelerators have led to modern treatments for SRF cavities that achieve higher performance than was previously possible. Advanced SRF cavities using particle accelerator technology are now being used to search for new physics, including dark matter and gravitational waves. The extremely high Q makes it possible to search for very small signals from photons in the radio frequency range, and the extremely high electric fields makes it possible to perform experiments that involve pumping one mode of a cavity in order to search for power transfer mediated by new physics. This talk will present novel experiments that employ SRF cavities, including searches for axions and dark photons dark matter, light-shining-through-walls, and high frequency gravitational waves. Results to be presented include searches with world record sensitivity.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
NASA NTRS1974

Dielectric comparison of lunar and terrestrial fines at lunar conditions

The dielectric properties of lunar fines 74241,2 in the audio-frequency range under lunarlike conditions are presented. Results suggest that volatiles are released during storage and transport of the lunar sample. Apparently, subsequent adsorption of volatiles on the sample surface alters its dielectric response. The assumed volatile influence disappears after evacuation. A comparison of the dielectric properties of lunar and terrestrial materials as a function of density, temperature, and frequency indicates that if the terrestrial sample analyzed were completely devoid of atmospheric moisture, it would present dielectric losses smaller than those of the lunar sample. It is concluded that density prevails over temperature as the controlling factor of dielectric permittivity in the lunar regolith and that dielectric losses vary slowly with depth.

Alvarez, R.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Extension of the quasistatic far-wing line shape theory to multicomponent anisotropic potentials

The formalism developed previously for the calculation of the far-wing line shape function and the corresponding absorption coefficient using a single-component anisotropic interaction term and the binary collision and quasistatic approximations is generalized to multicomponent anisotropic potential functions. Explicit expressions are presented for several common cases, including the long-range dipole-dipole plus dipole-quadrupole interaction and a linear molecule interacting with a perturber atom. After determining the multicomponent functional representation for the interaction between the CO2 and Ar from previously published data, we calculate the theoretical line shape function and the corresponding absorption due to the nu(sub 3) band of CO2 in the frequency range 2400-2580 cm(exp -1) and compare our results with previous calculations carried out using a single-component anisotropic interaction, and with the results obtained assuming Lorentzian line shapes. The principal uncertainties in the present results, possible refinements of the theoretical formalism, and the applicability to other systems are discussed briefly.

Ma, Q.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Coupling Between CPW and Slotline Modes in Finite Ground CPW with Unequal Ground Plane Widths

The coupling between the desired CPW mode and the unwanted, slotline, mode is presented for finite ground coplanar waveguides with unequal ground plane widths. Measurements, quasi-static conformal mapping, and Method of Moment analysis are performed to determine the dependence of the slotline mode excitation on the physical dimensions of the FGC line and on the frequency range of operation. Introduction: Finite ground coplanar waveguide (FGC) is often used in low cost Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (MMICs) because of its many advantages over microstrip and conventional CoPlanar Waveguide (CPW). It is uniplanar, which facilitates easy connection of series and shunt elements without via holes, supports a low loss, quasi-TEM mode over a wide frequency band, and since the ground planes are electrically and physically narrow, typically less than lambda/5 wide where lambda is the guided wavelength, they reduce the circuit size and the influence of higher order modes. However, they still support the parasitic slotline mode that plagues all CPW transmission lines.

Ponchak, George E.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Month-to-month and year-to-year reproducibility of high frequency QRS ECG signals

High frequency electrocardiography analyzing the entire QRS complex in the frequency range of 150 to 250 Hz may prove useful in the detection of coronary artery disease, yet the long-term stability of these waveforms has not been fully characterized. Therefore, we prospectively investigated the reproducibility of the root mean squared voltage, kurtosis, and the presence versus absence of reduced amplitude zones in signal averaged 12-lead high frequency QRS recordings acquired in the supine position one month apart in 16 subjects and one year apart in 27 subjects. Reproducibility of root mean squared voltage and kurtosis was excellent over these time intervals in the limb leads, and acceptable in the precordial leads using both the V-lead and CR-lead derivations. The relative error of root mean squared voltage was 12% month-to-month and 16% year-to-year in the serial recordings when averaged over all 12 leads. Reduced amplitude zones were also reproducible up to a rate of 87% and 81%, respectively, for the month-to-month and year-to-year recordings. We conclude that 12-lead high frequency QRS electrocardiograms are sufficiently reproducible for clinical use.

Coronary Disease/diagnosis↗
DOE OSTI2014

Effect of spatial density variation and O+ concentration on the growth and evolution of electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves

We simulate electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) wave growth and evolution within three regions, the plasmasphere (or plasmaspheric plume), the plasmapause, and the low-density plasmatrough outside the plasmapause. First, we use a ring current simulation with a plasmasphere model to model the particle populations that give rise to the instability for conditions observed on 9 June 2001. Then, using two different models for the cold ion composition, we do a full scale hybrid code simulation in dipole coordinates of the EMIC waves on a meridional plane at MLT = 18 and at 1900 UT within a range of L shell from L = 4.9 to 6.7. EMIC waves were observed during June 9, 2001 by Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) spacecraft. While an exact comparison between observed and simulated spectra is not possible here, we do find significant similarities between the two, at least at one location within the region of largest wave growth. We find that the plasmapause is not a preferred region for EMIC wave growth, though waves can grow in that region. The density gradient within the plasmapause does, however, affect the orientation of wave fronts and wave vector both within the plasmapause and in adjacent regions. There is a preference for EMIC waves to be driven in the He+ band (frequencies between the O+ and He+ gyrofrequencies) within the plasmasphere, although they can also grow in the plasmatrough. If present, H+ band waves are more likely to grow in the plasmatrough. This fact, plus L dependence of the frequency and possible time evolution toward lower frequency waves, can be explained by a simple model. Large O+ concentration limits the frequency range of or even totally quenches EMIC waves. This is more likely to occur in the plasmatrough at solar maximum. Such large O+ concentration significantly affects the H+ cutoff frequency and hence the width in frequency of the stop band above the He+ gyrofrequency. EMIC wave surfaces predicted by cold plasma theory are altered by the finite temperature of the ring current H+.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗