| Tunable Membrane-Based Wastewater Treatment and Resource Recovery |
- Customizable membrane structure and surface properties provide selective removal of contaminants of emerging concerns (CEC) and recovery of valuable components.
- An enlarged membrane surface area, combined with a gutter effect from the interlayer, results in nearly double the water permeability of current filtration membranes.
- Achieves high-performance recovery of essential nutrients/fertilizers that are free of CECs.
|
8633 |
|
| Microgeodes Enable Tunable Optical Response for Advanced Coatings/Paint |
- Microgeodes have a programmable structure of nanowires that allows their optical response to be engineered precisely over multiple spectral bands, from UV through mid-IR.
- Microgeodes combine the tunability and versatility of nanowires with the processability of microspheres to provide a photonic materials platform for a wide range of applications.
- Microgeode paints could reduce building surface temperatures by as much as 25°C, offering the potential for significant consumer savings while retaining aesthetically pleasing colors.
|
8866 |
|
| Tunable MEMs Gas Sensor Improves Selectivity and Sensitivity |
- Versatile: Customizes MEMS chemical sensors, compatible with a variety of sensing materials, allowing for the detection of numerous gas-phase analytes
- Easy to manufacture: Uses batch-fabricated sensors compatible with COTS electronics
- Highly sensitive: Offers sub parts-per-million detection limits for volatile organic compounds
- Enhanced selectivity: Combines gravimetric and impedimetric responses to demonstrate enhanced discrimination between multiple VOCs
- Powerful: Enables the simultaneous observation of both mass loading and dielectric changes in polymeric sensing films upon sorption of an analyte
- Innovative: Uses the transient response characteristics of a sensor response to a gated exposure event, rather than steady-state sensor data
|
8269, 8987 |
|
| Sustained Lymphatic Drug Delivery System Potentially Improves Efficacy and Safety of Immunotherapy and Targeted Therapies |
- This sustained lymphatic drug delivery system guides therapeutics and imaging agents to the injection site, lymphatic vessels, and lymph nodes.
- Sustained lymphatic delivery enables lower dosing and fewer administrations to potentially improve therapeutic response while reducing adverse effects and costs.
- The simplicity of a vaccine-like, sustained drug release injection allows use at less expensive community health centers.
|
8637 |
|
| Superluminescent Light Projection (SLP) System Decreases Nanoscale Printing Costs by 10–50 Times |
- This superluminescent light projection (SLP) system decreases overall nanoscale printing costs by 10–50 times.
- A parallel writing mechanism supports higher throughput speeds: up to 100 times higher than existing metal printing methods and four times higher than existing polymer printing methods.
- SLP creates sharp-edged images with minimal speckling patterns, resulting in high-resolution images and structures on both polymer and metal-based films.
|
9066 |
|
| Quickly and Easily Generate Designer Photopatterned Hydrogel Matrices for Complex Microfluidic Tissue/Organ-on-a-Chip Devices |
- Offers better spatiotemporal control and customization of hydrogel crosslinking and cell patterning
- Provides a viable alternative to PEG-MAL for culturing primary B cells ex vivo and studying their response to antigens
- Reduces timing and compatibility issues and offers designer flexibility compared to natural matrices
|
8986 |
|
| Electric Field Treatment Creates Safe, Effective Antimicrobial Surfaces |
- Creates safe, effective antimicrobial surfaces via bacteria inactivation without the use of chemicals
- Targets cell membranes or capsid, is less likely to induce antimicrobial resistance, and should be effective for antibiotic-resistant bacteria
- Requires very short electrical pulses to achieve effective bacteria inactivation, potentially leading to better antifouling performance
|
9130 |
|
| Chemically Modified Reduced Graphene Oxides (rGOs) Improve Strength and Qualities of Polymer Composites |
- Chemically modifying rGO creates improved dispersibility and miscibility that can be used in polymer processes as a composite reinforcement or coating material.
- Easily scalable solution chemistry and purification/filtration makes the process economically feasible, resulting in a commercially viable material for many applications.
- Melt lamination results in a robust conductive coating that is more durable than comparable polymer-based coatings and enables many electronically active device designs.
|
8297 |
|
| Artificial Neural Network (ANN) with Unique Input Design That Significantly Reduces Computational Costs of Complex Engineering Systems |
- Neural network’s novel input can utilize first-order schemes and local patches and allows for discontinuities to be reflected accurately and with greater resolution than existing products.
- This adaptable ANN can be adopted by commercial and scientific research as a stand-alone solution or in conjunction with existing software.
- Lower costs for running complex and repetitive computations can be achieved by implementing this neural network with an input system that processes low-cost numerical solution patches arising from two or more converging solutions.
|
8963 |
|
| Novel Nanocarriers Strengthen Therapeutic Delivery, Improves Efficacy |
- Greater therapeutic effectiveness is due to the synergistic work of multiple therapeutic agents (hydrophobic/hydrophilic charged) that can be delivered via this dual-loaded biomaterial.
- The risk of immunotoxicity to a vaccine is reduced because an adjuvant, which can induce the body’s anti-inflammatory immune response, may be loaded and simultaneously delivered with the vaccine.
- The novel nanocarrier has broad market application since it can deliver vaccines, gene therapy, small molecule drugs, and even contrast agents.
|
8988 |
|
| Microrobots for Neurosurgery Applications |
- Minimally invasive: Significantly reduces invasiveness of procedures in comparison to current macroscale, neurosurgical robots
- Precise control: Uses 3D position data of the microrobots on the brain surface in a closed-loop system to adjust the magnetic field parameters (i.e., magnitude, frequency, phase, and direct current [DC] offset of each coil) as well as the forces the robots exert to the biopsy tissue
- Facilitates movement: Employs microfabricated shapes that dictate the microrobot's movements, limits their contact with the brain surface to reduce adhesion, and may also provide a means for the robot to propel itself in fluid
|
8749 |
|
| Hybrid Molecular Catalysts: A New Blueprint for Catalyst Design, Preparation, and Testing |
- Attachment of molecular catalysts to solid supports can lead to new reactivity not seen under homogeneous conditions
- At an optimal atomic layer deposition (ALD) layer thickness, the molecular catalyst remains highly active while still being resistant to surface detachment and subsequent deactivation
- Catalyst separation and recovery achieved via a simple filtering and washing process rather than energy- and time-intensive distillation or re-crystallization processes
- In addition to the simple filter-and-wash process mentioned above, encapsulation requires only about 10 reaction cycles, making this process technologically and economically viable for large-scale manufacturing
|
8537 |
|
| Vapor Phase Infiltration Produces Solar Cells with Greater Thermal Stability |
- Stability: Decreasing spiro-OMeTAD crystallization improves thermal stability of hole transport layers within perovskite solar cells (PSCs)
- Longevity: Eliminating the main cause of PSCs’ operational degradation increases the overall product lifespan
- Efficiency: Preventing the delamination of the layers transporting electronic charge has doubled the power conversion efficiency of modified PSCs
|
9034 |
|
| Atomic Metal Catalysts |
- Innovative: Generates new isomers by changing the order in which atoms are added in a hetero-atomic cluster (can maximize available catalytic sites)
- Efficient: Creates and optimizes active isomers of atomic metals such as Au and Pd, increasing the catalytic efficiency of these high-demand metals (requires minimal precious catalytic metal)
- Scalable: Provides a scalable process resulting in theoretically predictable catalytic properties
|
6451, 5217 |
|
| Thin Current Spreading Layers Improve Breakdown Performance |
- Increases current uniformity: Improves cumulative current flow distribution from ~40% to ~100% of the p-type contact
- Improves breakdown performance: Avoids premature breakdown at the mesa edges making quasi-vertical devices comparable in performance to more expensive vertical devices.
- Improves Immunity to Etch Variation: Because current flow is no longer crowded along the mesa edges, process related variations in the mesa etching are less important to the diode performance.
|
8789 |
|
| Cascaded Nickel Hard Mask |
- Substantially deeper etches: Because a very thick metal mask can be created, a wide range of µm features can be etched in a variety of III-Nitride semiconductors, allowing for extremely high voltage devices that require thicker layer structures
- Robust: This method has demonstrated highly consistent and effective protection against the kind of damage that is typical with standard fabrication methods
- Scalable: The nickel hard mask with cascaded e-beam evaporation and sputtering metal deposition method can readily be applied to the large-scale production of electronic devices
|
8790 |
|
| p-type Be-Doped AlN Films and Layered Films |
- Enabling: Leverages MME method to provide the first access to p-type AlN:Be films, a superior ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor material good for high-power, high-temperature diodes and transistors
- Ease of fabrication: Avoids costly and complicated methods unfavorable for beryllium doping
- Improved breakdown performance: Achieves high reverse breakdown voltage—a significant advantage over WBG materials such as silicon carbide (SiC) and GaN
|
8810, 8666, 8786 |
|
| Micro Ammonia Production System (MAPS)—Systems and methods for making nitrogen-based compounds |
- Higher yield and efficiency: Uses hollow hybrid nanoparticles instead of solid nanoparticles for a three-fold enhancement in electrocatalytic activity due to the increased surface area and higher number of successful reactant collisions
- Sustainable production: Leverages renewable electricity sources and offers clean and sustainable ammonia electrosynthesis, unlike the current industrial method for ammonia production that is energy intensive and heavily relies on fossil fuels
- Simplified process: Enables production of ammonia via gas-phase system with few or no additional steps for separation and purification
|
8056 |
|
| Chip-Scale Electrochemical Double-Layer (ECDL) Supercapacitors |
- Decreased size: Minimizes space that does not contribute to volumetric density and is drastically smaller than conventional ECDL capacitors, allowing capacitor-dependent devices to shrink considerably
- High power: Achieves gravimetric energy densities of over 100 watt-hours per kilogram
- Improved performance: The vertically aligned graphene-functionalized carbon nanotubes Offers high porosity and surface area for improved pseudocapacitance by vertically aligning graphene-functionalized nanotubes
|
6573 |
|
| Superior Supercapacitors |
- High performance: Achieves average energy densities as high as 90 Wh/Kg
- Scalable: Leverages a low-cost PAN fabrication process that dramatically increases surface area
- Widely applicable: Demonstrates potential for advances in a variety of energy storage and capacitive water desalination applications
|
6201 |
|
