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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 1,621 records · Page 90
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2016

TH-AB-BRB-04: Quality Assurance for Advanced Digital Linac Implementations

Current state-of-the art digital C-arm medical linear accelerators are capable of delivering radiation treatments with high level of automation, which affords coordinated motions of gantry, couch, and multileaf collimator (MLC) with dose rate modulations. The new machine capacity has shown the potential to bring substantially improved radiation dosimetry and/or delivery efficiency to many challenging diseases. Combining an integrated beam orientation optimization algorithm with automated machine navigation, markedly improved dose conformity has been achieved using 4ρ therapy. Trajectory modulated radiation therapy (TMAT) can be used to deliver highly conformal dose to partial breast or to carve complex dose distribution for therapy involving extended volumes such as total marrow and total lymph node treatment. Dynamic electron arc radiotherapy (DEAR) not only overcomes the deficiencies of conventional electron therapy in dose conformity and homogeneity but also achieves so without patient-specific shields. The combination of MLC and couch tracking provides improved motion management of thoracic and abdominal tumors. A substantial body of work has been done in these technological advances for clinical translation. The proposed symposium will provide a timely review of these exciting opportunities. Learning Objectives: Recognize the potential of using digitally controlled linacs for clinically significant improvements in delivered dose distributions for various treatment sites. Identify existing approaches to treatment planning, optimization and delivery for treatment techniques utilizing the advanced functions of digital linacs and venues for further development and improvement. Understand methods for testing and validating delivery system performance. Identify tools available on current delivery systems for implementation and control for such treatments. Obtain the update in clinical applications, trials and regulatory approval. K. Sheng, NIH U19AI067769, NIH R43CA183390, NIH R01CA188300, Varian Medical Systems V. Yu, Varian Medical Systems, AAPM Summer Undergraduate Fellowship, NSF graduate fellowship S. Nill, Elekta AB. Cancer Research UK under Programme C33589/A19727, NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at The Royal Marsden and The Institute of Cancer Research.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2014

TH-C-17A-07: Visualizing and Quantifying Radiation Therapy in Real-Time Using a Novel Beam Imaging Technique

Purpose: Radiation therapy uses invisible high energy X-rays to treat an invisible tumor. Proper positioning of the treatment beam relative to the patient's anatomy during dose delivery is critically important to the success of treatment. We develop and characterize a novel radiation therapy beam visualization technique for real-time monitoring of patient treatment. Methods: Custom made flexible scintillator sheets were fabricated from gadolinium oxysulfide (GOS) particles that had been doped with terbium within a silicone elastomer matrix. Sheets of several thicknesses ranging from 0.3 to 1mm were prepared and tested. Sheets were exposed to megavoltage X-ray and electron beams from a Varian linac and the resulting optical signal was collected by multiple CMOS cameras placed in the treatment room. Real-time images were collected for different beam energies and dose rates. Signal intensity and SNR were calculated by processing the acquired images. Results: All signals were detectable in the presence of full room lighting and at an integration time of 45ms. Average signal intensity and SNR increased with both sheet thickness and dose rate and decreased with beam energy and incident light. For a given sheet thickness and beam energy the correlation between dose rate and signal intensity was highly linear. Increased sheet thickness or dose rate results in a linear increase in the detected signal. All results are consistent with analytical approximations. Conclusion: The technique offers a means of accurately visualizing a radiation therapy beam shape and fluence in real time. The effects of salient parameters have been characterized and will enable further optimization of the technique as it is implemented into the clinical workflow. The project described was supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health through UL1 TR001085.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2017

Accelerating Lattice QCD Multigrid on GPUs Using Fine-Grained Parallelization

The past decade has witnessed a dramatic acceleration of lattice quantum chromodynamics calculations in nuclear and particle physics. This has been due to both significant progress in accelerating the iterative linear solvers using multi-grid algorithms, and due to the throughput improvements brought by GPUs. Deploying hierarchical algorithms optimally on GPUs is non-trivial owing to the lack of parallelism on the coarse grids, and as such, these advances have not proved multiplicative. Using the QUDA library, we demonstrate that by exposing all sources of parallelism that the underlying stencil problem possesses, and through appropriate mapping of this parallelism to the GPU architecture, we can achieve high efficiency even for the coarsest of grids. Results are presented for the Wilson-Clover discretization, where we demonstrate up to 10x speedup over present state-of-the-art GPU-accelerated methods on Titan. Finally, we look to the future, and consider the software implications of our findings.

Clark, M. A.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Lignin-derived electrochemical energy materials and systems

Electrochemical energy storage systems such as supercapacitors, rechargeable batteries and fuel cells have been proven the most effective technologies for energy conversion, storage, and management at different scales. Although a large number of electrochemical energy technologies have been developed in the past and they will continue to be optimized in terms of cost, lifetime, and performance, there is a substantial growing demand for advanced electrochemical energy systems. To deploy these advanced systems, the electrode and electrolyte materials with higher performance, longer life, and lower cost, must be developed. Lignin is the second most abundant natural polymer after cellulose, a byproduct from emerging cellulosic biorefineries, and a waste product from pulp and paper industries. Numerous researches have successfully demonstrated that lignin from different sources can be used as precursors or feedstocks for preparing high-performance electrochemical energy materials and components such as electrodes, electrolytes, membrane separators, and additives. Moreover, techno-economic analyses indicate that it is possible to prepare cost-effective carbons from lignin at engineering scales, compared to current carbon products. These facts suggest that scalable conversion of lignin into high-value energy materials will offer a promising pathway to not only promote the utilization and valorization of lignin but also boost the development of the advanced electrochemical energy systems. This review presents state of the arts of renewable energy materials derived from various lignin and their applications in electrochemical energy systems with emphasis on supercapacitors, rechargeable batteries, and fuel cells. Meanwhile, this article also aims to carve out the critical barriers for lignin-derived high-performance materials for energy applications, intending to identify viable approaches for synthesis of sustainable new energy materials.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Predicting the oxidation states of Mn ions in the oxygen-evolving complex of photosystem II using supervised and unsupervised machine learning

Abstract Serial Femtosecond Crystallography at the X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) sources enabled the imaging of the catalytic intermediates of the oxygen evolution reaction of Photosystem II (PSII). However, due to the incoherent transition of the S-states, the resolved structures are a convolution from different catalytic states. Here, we train Decision Tree Classifier and K-means clustering models on Mn compounds obtained from the Cambridge Crystallographic Database to predict the S-state of the X-ray, XFEL, and CryoEM structures by predicting the Mn’s oxidation states in the oxygen-evolving complex. The model agrees mostly with the XFEL structures in the dark S 1 state. However, significant discrepancies are observed for the excited XFEL states (S 2 , S 3, and S 0 ) and the dark states of the X-ray and CryoEM structures. Furthermore, there is a mismatch between the predicted S-states within the two monomers of the same dimer, mainly in the excited states. We validated our model against other metalloenzymes, the valence bond model and the Mn spin densities calculated using density functional theory for two of the mismatched predictions of PSII. The model suggests designing a more optimized sample delivery and illumiation systems are crucial to precisely resolve the geometry of the advanced S-states to overcome the noncoherent S-state transition. In addition, significant radiation damage is observed in X-ray and CryoEM structures, particularly at the dangler Mn center (Mn4). Our model represents a valuable tool for investigating the electronic structure of the catalytic metal cluster of PSII to understand the water splitting mechanism.

Plant Sciences↗
DOE OSTI2012

Dosimetric comparison of metastatic spinal photon treatment techniques

Traditional palliative treatment of metastatic cancer to the vertebral bodies often results in doses to the spinal cord that are higher than the dose prescribed to the target, or gross tumor volume (GTV). This study compares traditional techniques of spine palliation with intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). The purpose of the study is 2-fold: first, the study demonstrates the benefits of using IMRT to lower the dose to the organs at risk (OAR), particularly for the spinal cord and other nonspecified normal tissues; second, the article provides information regarding the advantages and disadvantages of commonly used conventional techniques for treating the vertebral bodies based on patient anatomy. Because the use of IMRT or other advanced techniques may be prohibitive because of insurance issues, treatment plans were created that compared optimal coverage vs. optimal sparing for single-field, wedged-pair, and opposed-beam arrangements. Fifty-five patients were selected and divided by location of target (cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spine) and also by the measured separation between the anterior and posterior surface of the patient at the level of mid-GTV. Within each anatomic category the patients again were divided into the categories of small, medium, and large based on separation. The patient dataset that most closely represented the average separation within each category was selected, resulting in a total of 9 patients, and the appropriate treatment plan techniques were calculated for each of the 9 patients. The results of the study do show that the use of IMRT is far superior when compared with other techniques, both for coverage and for sparing of the surrounding tissue, regardless of patient size and the section of spine being treated. Based on a combination of both target coverage and sparing of normal tissues, the conventional plan of choice may vary by both the section of spine to be treated and by the size of the patient.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Improvement of two-phase closure models in CTF using Bayesian inference

Under the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) program, extensive capabilities have been developed in CTF to analyze light-water reactors (LWRs) for normal operating conditions, departure from nucleate boiling (DNB), and system transients. However, further improvements are required in the modeling and simulation of boiling water reactors (BWRs), which is a focus of the Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program. In this work, CTF validation results were used to optimize selected modeling coefficients by calibrating to experimental data using a Bayesian inference approach. Here, calibration studies were conducted to improve (vapor) void fraction prediction without worsening the two-phase pressure drop prediction, as well as to improve the two-phase pressure drop prediction. Calibration was performed for interfacial drag and wall shear models. Surrogates were developed to alleviate the computational expense required for sampling the parameter space using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). An assessment performed with calibrated models demonstrated an improvement of CTF in its prediction of key parameters such as void fraction and two-phase pressure drop.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2026

Surface Segregation of Liquid Metal Plasma-Facing Component Alloys: A ReaxFF Investigation

Engineering liquid metal alloys offers a transformative pathway for plasma-facing components by enabling chemically tailored surfaces that can simultaneously optimize plasma-material interactions, reduce divertor heat flux, and enhance core plasma confinement, thereby advancing the commercial viability of nuclear fusion power plants. This study, employing an atomistic simulation approach, provides direct evidence that incorporating nonmetal surface-active agents (such as O and H, or their combination) enables strong surface segregation. This capability makes tin−aluminum (Sn−Al) and tin−lithium (Sn−Li) alloys, with suitable compositions, good candidates for PFC applications. Specifically, the presence of low-Z solutes (Li, Al) leads to preferential surface enrichment, which imparts low-Z sputtering characteristics, while the Sn solvent maintains thermophysical stability. To systematically examine this behavior, we developed a ReaxFF force field spanning the full Sn/Al/Li/O/H chemistry, validated it against formation energies and elastic constants, and applied it in reactive molecular dynamics simulations at fusion-relevant temperatures. We also introduced an overlapbased segregation index that captures interfacial compositional separation directly from atomistic density distributions. Here, this metric reveals a clear hierarchy of segregation regimes and provides a unified view across all systems studied. Together, these findings establish a mechanistic link between nonmetal chemistry and interfacial structure, providing a predictive framework for designing self-adaptive, low-sputtering liquid metal alloys for fusion applications.

Alloys↗
DOE OSTI2020

Comprehensive Detection of Single Amino Acid Variants and Evaluation of Their Deleterious Potential in a PANC-1 Cell Line

Identifying single amino acid variants (SAAVs) in cancer is critical for precision oncology. Several advanced algorithms are now available to identify SAAVs but attempts to combine different algorithms and optimize them on large datasets to achieve a more comprehensive coverage of SAAVs have not been implemented. Herein we report an expanded detection of SAAVs in the PANC-1 cell line using three different strategies, which results in identification of 540 SAAVs in the mass spectrometry data, the most comprehensive coverage yet reported. Among the set of 540 SAAVs, 79 are evaluated as deleterious SAAVs based on analysis using novel AssVar software in which one of the driver mutations found in each protein of KRAS, TP53 and SLC37A4 is further validated using independent selected reaction monitoring (SRM) analysis. Our study represents the most comprehensive discovery of SAAVs to date and the first large-scale detection of deleterious SAAVs in the PANC-1 cell line. This work may serve as the basis for future research in pancreatic cancer and personal immunotherapy and treatment.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Navigating the Expansive Landscapes of Soft Materials: A User Guide for High-Throughput Workflows

Synthetic polymers are highly customizable with tailored structures and functionality, yet this versatility generates challenges in the design of advanced materials due to the size and complexity of the design space. Thus, exploration and optimization of polymer properties using combinatorial libraries has become increasingly common, which requires careful selection of synthetic strategies, characterization techniques, and rapid processing workflows to obtain fundamental principles from these large data sets. Herein, we provide guidelines for strategic design of macromolecule libraries and workflows to efficiently navigate these high-dimensional design spaces. We describe synthetic methods for multiple library sizes and structures as well as characterization methods to rapidly generate data sets, including tools that can be adapted from biological workflows. We further highlight relevant insights from statistics and machine learning to aid in data featurization, representation, and analysis. This Perspective acts as a “user guide” for researchers interested in leveraging high-throughput screening toward the design of multifunctional polymers and predictive modeling of structure–property relationships in soft materials.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2013

Neutron capture measurement on {sup 173}Lu at LANSCE with DANCE detector

The (n,{gamma}) cross section on the unstable {sup 173}Lu(t{sub 1/2} = 1.37y) has been measured from thermal energy up to 200 eV at Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) with The Detector for Advanced Neutron Capture Experiements (DANCE). The main aim of this study is to validate and optimize reaction models for unstable nucleus. A preliminary capture yield will be presented in this paper.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2014

Tip-based source of femtosecond electron pulses at 30 keV

We present a nano-scale photoelectron source, optimized for ultrashort pulse durations and well-suited for time-resolved diffraction and advanced laser acceleration experiments. A tungsten tip of several-ten-nanometers diameter mounted in a suppressor-extractor electrode configuration allows the generation of 30 keV electron pulses with an estimated pulse duration of 9 fs (standard deviation; 21 fs full width at half maximum) at the gun exit. We infer the pulse duration from particle tracking simulations, which are in excellent agreement with experimental measurements of the electron-optical properties of the source in the spatial domain. We also demonstrate femtosecond-laser triggered operation of the apparatus. The temporal broadening of the pulse upon propagation to a diffraction sample can be greatly reduced by collimating the beam. Besides the short electron pulse duration, a tip-based source is expected to feature a large transverse coherence and a nanometric emittance.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2019

Multimode scanning X-ray diffraction microscopy for diamond anvil cell experiments

We have designed and implemented a new experimental system for fast mapping of crystal structures and other structural features of materials under high pressure at the High Pressure Collaborative Access Team, Sector 16 of the Advanced Photon Source. The system utilizes scanning X-ray diffraction microscopy (SXDM) and is optimized for use with diamond anvil cell devices. In SXDM, the X-ray diffraction (XRD) is collected in a forward scattering geometry from points on a two-dimensional grid by fly-scanning the sample with respect to a micro-focused X-ray beam. The recording of XRD is made during the continuous motion of the sample using a fast (millisecond) X-ray area detector in synchrony with the sample positioners, resulting in a highly efficient data collection for SXDM. A new computer program, X-ray Diffractive Imaging (XDI), has been developed with the SXDM system. The XDI program provides a graphical interface for constructing and displaying the SXDM images in several modes: (1) phase mapping based on structural information, (2) pressure visualization based on the equation of state, (3) microstructural features mapping based on peak shape parameters, and (4) grain size and preferred-orientation based on peak shape parameters. The XDI is a standalone program and can be generally used for displaying SXDM images. Two examples of iron and zirconium samples under high pressure are presented to demonstrate the applications of SXDM. Published under license by AIP Publishing.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2018

Electron mean-free-path filtering in Dirac material for improved thermoelectric performance

Recent advancements in thermoelectric materials have largely benefited from various approaches, including band engineering and defect optimization, among which the nanostructuring technique presents a promising way to improve the thermoelectric figure of merit ( zT ) by means of reducing the characteristic length of the nanostructure, which relies on the belief that phonons’ mean free paths (MFPs) are typically much longer than electrons’. Pushing the nanostructure sizes down to the length scale dictated by electron MFPs, however, has hitherto been overlooked as it inevitably sacrifices electrical conduction. Here we report through ab initio simulations that Dirac material can overcome this limitation. The monotonically decreasing trend of the electron MFP allows filtering of long-MFP electrons that are detrimental to the Seebeck coefficient, leading to a dramatically enhanced power factor. Using SnTe as a material platform, we uncover this MFP filtering effect as arising from its unique nonparabolic Dirac band dispersion. Room-temperature zT can be enhanced by nearly a factor of 3 if one designs nanostructures with grain sizes of ∼10 nm. Our work broadens the scope of the nanostructuring approach for improving the thermoelectric performance, especially for materials with topologically nontrivial electronic dynamics.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2023

Creep strength boosted by a high-density of stable nanoprecipitates in high-chromium steels

There is a need worldwide to develop materials for advanced power plants with steam temperatures of 700°C and above that will achieve long-term creep-rupture strength and low CO 2 emissions. The creep resistance of actual 9-12Cr steels is not enough to fulfil the engineering requirements above 600°C. In this paper, the authors report their advances in the improvement of creep properties of this type of steels by the microstructural optimization through nano-precipitation using two methodologies. 1) Applying a high temperature austenitization cycle followed by an ausforming step (thermomechanical treatment, TMT) to G91 steel, to increase the martensite dislocation density and, thus, the number density of MX precipitates (M = V,Nb; X = C,N) but at the expense of deteriorating the ductility. 2) Compositional adjustments, guided by computational thermodynamics, combined with a conventional heat treatment (no TMT), to design novel steels with a good ductility while still possessing a high number density of MX precipitates, similar to the one obtained after the TMT in G91. The microstructures have been characterized by optical, scanning and transmission electron microscopy, EBSD and atom probe tomography. The creep behaviour at 700°C has been evaluated under a load of 200 N using small punch creep tests.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2021

Correlation Between Corrugation-Induced Flexoelectric Polarization and Conductivity of Low-Dimensional Transition Metal Dichalcogenides

The tunability of polar and semiconducting properties of low-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have propelled them to the forefront of fundamental and applied physical research. These materials can vary their electrophysical properties from nonpolar to ferroelectric, and from direct-band semiconducting to metallic. In addition to classical controlling factors, such as field effect, composition, and doping, new degrees of freedom emerge in TMDs due to the curvature-induced electron redistribution and the associated changes in electronic properties. Here we theoretically explore the elastic and electric fields, flexoelectric polarization and free charge density for a TMD nanoflake placed on a rough substrate with a sinusoidal corrugation profile. Finite element modelling results for different flake thickness and corrugation depth yield insights into the flexoelectric nature of the out-of-plane electric polarization and establish the unambiguous correlation between the polarization and static conductivity modulation. The modulation is caused by the coupling between the deformation potential and inhomogeneous elastic strains, which evolve in the TMD nanoflake due to the adhesion between the flake surface and corrugated substrate. We reveal a pronounced maximum in the thickness dependences of the electron and hole conductivity of MoS 2 and MoTe 2 nanoflakes placed on a corrugated substrate, which opens the way for the optimization of their geometry towards significant improvement in their polar and electronic properties, necessary for advanced applications in nanoelectronics and memory devices. Specifically, the obtained results can be useful for the development of nanoscale straintronic devices based on the bended MoS 2 , MoTe 2 , and MoSTe nanoflakes, such as diodes and bipolar transistors with a bending-controllable sharpness of p-n junctions.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2015

Picosecond-resolved X-ray absorption spectroscopy at low signal contrast using a hard X-ray streak camera

A picosecond-resolving hard-X-ray streak camera has been in operation for several years at Sector 7 of the Advanced Photon Source (APS). Several upgrades have been implemented over the past few years to optimize integration into the beamline, reduce the timing jitter, and improve the signal-to-noise ratio. These include the development of X-ray optics for focusing the X-rays into the sample and the entrance slit of the streak camera, and measures to minimize the amount of laser light needed to generate the deflection-voltage ramp. For the latter, the photoconductive switch generating the deflection ramp was replaced with microwave power electronics. With these, the streak camera operates routinely at 88 MHz repetition rate, thus making it compatible with all of the APS fill patterns including use of all the X-rays in the 324-bunch mode. Sample data are shown to demonstrate the performance.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗
DOE OSTI2020

A cantilevered liquid-nitrogen-cooled silicon mirror for the Advanced Light Source Upgrade

This paper presents a novel cantilevered liquid-nitrogen-cooled silicon mirror design for the first optic in a new soft X-ray beamline that is being developed as part of the Advanced Light Source Upgrade (ALS-U) (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA). The beamline is optimized for photon energies between 400 and 1400 eV with full polarization control. Calculations indicate that, without correction, this design will achieve a Strehl ratio greater than 0.85 for the entire energy and polarization ranges of the beamline. With a correction achieved by moving the focus 7.5 mm upstream, the minimum Strehl ratio is 0.99. This design is currently the baseline plan for all new ALS-U insertion device beamlines.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗