R&D World December 2021

DECEMBER 2021 W W W . R D W O R L D O N L I N E . CO M

2021

FACING SUSTAINABILITY IN THE LAB PROGRAMS IDENTIFY ENVIRONMENTAL OFFENDERS IN THE QUEST FOR GREEN LABORATORIES.

SILICON VALLEY’S R&D TRIPLE PLAY

R&D 100 AWARDS

MIXED PARTNERSHIPS INVOLVE INDUSTRY, GOVERNMENT LABS AND ACADEMIA FOR A WINNING FORMULA.

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FINALIST

Congratulations to LLNL’s R&D100 Award Winners

Flux Improving scientific workflows in highperformance computing.

OTV Optical Transconductance Varistor with licensee Opcondys, Inc. Enabling a more efficient, low-emission smart grid.

MC-TF Multiplicity Counter for Thermal and Fast Neutrons with partner Radiation Monitoring Devices, Inc. Quickly assessing nuclear threat levels in real time.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ON A MISSION

LVOC’s Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory supports collaborative research with industry and academia.

LVOC

Livermore Valley Open Campus (LVOC) offers an innovation hub for industry and academia to collaborate with national laboratory personnel and develop new ideas to strengthen the nation’s economy.

“We need to bring together all the best minds, and that includes our partners in academia, in the private sector, in non-governmental organizations, in the philanthropic sector and from the international scientific community.

This facility plays an absolutely essential role in enabling us to bring all of those constituents together to solve these big problems for the world that we live in today.”

Dignitaries and LLNL senior management celebrated LVOC’s 2021 expansion.

~ Kim Budil LLNL Director

g Visit lvoc.org

This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. | TID-63336

INSIDE DECEMBER 2021 • vol 2 no 2 • RDWORLDONLINE.COM

From the editor ..............................................6 Product world .............................................. 84 Ad index ....................................................... 88 R&D 100 2021 R&D 100 Winners .................................8 2021 R&D 100 Special Recognition ........... 50 2021 R&D 100 Finalists ...............................56 2021 R&D 100 Winner Index .......................57 Features Facing sustainability in the lab ....................72 Programs identify environmental offenders in the quest for green laboratories.

Silicon Valley’s R&D triple play ...................78 Mixed partnerships involve industry, government labs and academia for a winning formula.

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FROM THE EDITOR

On being a better leader Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Dan Arvizu, the Chancellor of New Mexico State University. Arvizu also sits on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and was the first Hispanic to lead a DOE National Laboratory.

One of the things we touched on is what makes engineers and scientists good leaders. Arvizu recalled how his thesis advisor at Stanford had done kind of an informal study on graduate students coming out of the university. They looked at the success of these students relative to their scores, both verbal and math on the ACT, SAT and GRE. They determined that the best determinate of leadership success was their verbal skills, not their math or technical skills.

To Arvizu, this meant that there was another dimension important for success beyond simple technical competence. Even during his work at Bell Labs and Sandia National Laboratories, he learned that everyone was smart, that was never really an issue in deciding who to promote.

“Then how well are you at bringing people together? How well are you at inspiring people? How well are you at getting the most out of each individual? That requires vision, it requires leadership, it requires care and feeding, it requires a variety of things that are more people skills, the soft skills,” he said. “Again, in addition to your competency, you’ve got to gain their respect first, and then after that you’ve got to have the competencies to do the other.”

As an engineer myself, I’ve seen that my college engineering friends who have the best soft skills have moved the fastest up the corporate ladder and found the most success. And the ability to communicate well is critical. That means via the written word, speaking one-on-one and presenting to groups.

Arvizu also pointed out that being a good leader means knowing your strengths and your teammates, as well.

“I’ve had a very, very blessed experience in having great teams around me.

Many times, people that are much better than me are doing a lot of great work. It’s being the quarterback, being the orchestrator, being the person that sees the bigger picture, knowing what people’s roles are, lets them do their job, and be their big cheerleader,” he said. “Your success is my success. Everything I can do to help you succeed is what I’m going to do.” &

Paul J. Heney | VP, Editorial Director pheney@wtwhmedia.com On Twitter @wtwh_paulheney

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ANALYTICAL/TEST FINALIST WINNERS

3D Printing Biomimetic Materials and Structures for Tissue Integration (BioMS-Ti) Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) Ingrowth Biotech Co. BioMS-Ti is a biomedical material that can accelerate the rapid fusion between soft and hard tissues after injuring the cruciate ligament. It shortens recovery time, is sturdy and will not easily come loose resulting in a second injury, and the high load intensity allows for safer and lasting implantation. BioMS-Ti is based on the combined considerations of biomechanics properties and cell tissue needs, especially that these two are co-dependent. According to Wolff’s law, the stress borne by the skeleton will influence the growth of the skeleton: the excess load will cause bone tissue damage, while the skeleton will gradually shrink due to too little load. Therefore, if the design of the bone nail structure can allow the skeleton to take on the appropriate range of stress, it will benefit the growth of the tissue.

Ballistic Gas Chromatograph (BGC) MRIGlobal VICI Valco Instruments The Ballistic Gas Chromatograph (BGC) instrument can collect vapor (air) samples, desorbing the sample onto a gas chromatograph (GC) column to separate components, detecting the chemicals using a Flame Photometric Detector (FPD) and reporting results every 30 seconds.

The BGC instrument also utilizes dual collection, dual column and dual detectors to allow the system to cycle from side A to side B. This unique approach allows the 30 second sample analysis time to be met.

Because the BGC was designed to be easily integrated, there are a variety of applications that can benefit from the enhanced speed and accuracy of this air monitoring system. Use the BGC to determine real-time concentrations of chemicals in hazardous environments.

Any time people need to be sent into a hazardous environment, understanding their level of safety is of vital importance. Ballistic GC allows workers in hazardous environments to know immediately when they need to increase their personal protective equipment or evacuate the area.

Aquadex SmartFlow Nuwellis Aquadex removes excess fluid in adults and children suffering from fluid overload, a common condition that can be caused by heart or kidney failure, or IV fluids given for various reasons. The technology filters the patient’s blood, removing excess plasma water to maintain stable blood flow in the heart and vessels. Providers can adjust the amount and rate of fluid to be removed. Adult patients with fluid overload sometimes have fluid removed through a Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy (CRRT) device, however, due to the large volume of blood required by CRRT devices, this therapy is not always tolerated in pediatric patients. Ultrafiltration with the Aquadex SmartFlow gently removes excess fluid at a low, adjustable rate that only requires 35 mL of blood to be outside of the body at once. The system is precise and uses a very small circuit which helps minimize hemodynamic instability in very sick patients. It’s customizable fluid removal rate allows providers to adjust their therapeutic approach to better meet the needs of a specific patient.

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ANALYTICAL/TEST FINALIST WINNERS

Bigfoot Spectral Cell Sorter Thermo Fisher Scientific Propel Labs The Bigfoot Spectral Cell Sorter with Sasquatch Software (SQS) is a flow cytometer that can analyze and sort cell populations based on scattered light and fluorescent properties at high speed and with high purity. It enables researchers to study more cell populations from limited quantity samples. Its high-speed electronics and innovative design accelerate sorting by up to 10 times while maintaining cell viability and improving ease of use. The integrated biocontainment system eliminates the need for separate biosafety cabinets. Cells in a liquid stream are interrogated with lasers and the light emitted collected to identify populations of interest. Droplets are generated and those with cells of interest are charged before passing through an electric field and directed into tubes or micro-titer plates. Bigfoot is the only spectral cell sorter that exists today that can sort at higher speeds with integrated biosafety.

Gibco CTS Rotea Counterflow Centrifugation System Thermo Fisher Scientific Scinogy Using the modular Gibco CTS Rotea Counterflow Centrifugation System for cell processing enables time-consuming processes, such as cell expansion, to be decoupled from rapid processes, such as buffer change and concentration. This improves facility and equipment utilization and reduces the capital investment required. Because it can be used from research through GMP clinical development and commercial manufacturing, it lowers the risk of process delays associated with changing systems. The sterile, closed, single-use kits enable cell processing in grade C clean rooms, leading to cost-effective transfer and scale-out of processes.

The CTS Rotea Counterflow Centrifugation system consists of a compact multipurpose instrument, a sterile single-use kit and intuitive, visual, customizable software. Together they constitute a closed system that offers exceptional cell recovery, flexible input and output volume capability and high throughput.

It’s suitable for multiple processes in the cell therapy workflow, including cell separation, concentration, washing, buffer exchange and cryopreservation. The CTS Rotea system will help researchers overcome manufacturing hurdles and bring the benefits of cell therapies to more patients.

OH0TA OVMed Medical Image Sensor OmniVision Technologies Inc. OmniVision’s OH0TA OVMed Medical Image Sensor is the world’s smallest commercially available image sensor. With a package size of just 0.55 mm x 0.55 mm, featuring a 1.0-micron pixel and a 1/31 optical format, it is smaller than the Guinness World Record held by its predecessor and quadruples resolution and provides wafer-level optics in a single compact assembly.

The OH0TA’s increased resolution and small size enable the visualization of tissues and other fine details inside some of the smallest areas of the human body. To achieve this increase in resolution, along with a smaller pixel size and optical format, the OH0TA is built on OmniVision’s patented PureCel Plus-S stacked die technology. This next-generation pixel technology also provides higher color fidelity and excellent low light sensitivity of 3600 mV/ lux-sec, along with a high signal-to-noise ratio of 37.5 dB for greater image quality. Additionally, the sensor’s low power consumption reduces camera heat for greater patient comfort and longer procedure durations, while reducing noise.

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ANALYTICAL/TEST FINALIST WINNERS

Forager Brightseed Forager is an AI-based scientific platform that maps the chemical complexity of plants to the biological complexity in humans. Through this map, Forager identifies bioactive compounds that solve unmet human health needs, linking distinct compounds from specific plants to fundamental biological processes that drive our health. Nature has evolved a wealth of natural compounds that promote health and wellness, as more than two thirds of all FDA-approved small molecule drugs are derived from natural compounds. Forager was developed to illuminate the rest.

Early in 2021, Forager discovered a class of extremely powerful bioactives in about 80 common plant sources that out-performed known pharmaceuticals to combat nonalcoholic fatty liver disease – a chronic condition that has no approved treatments and impacts millions of adults globally. Forager combines chemistry, biology and AI to discover natural plant compounds that address human health. It has produced a pipeline of bioactive compounds for more than 10 areas of human health, including metabolism, digestion, cognition and immunity.

SIRIUS XHS Dewesoft d.o.o.

SIRIUS XHS is a high-speed data acquisition system with the new Hybrid ADC technology capable of high-bandwidth transient recording and very high-dynamic, alias-free data acquisition. Sirius XHS is the first device with Hybrid ADC technology capable of doing both high bandwidth transient recording and very high dynamic alias-free acquisition, and this performance is software-selectable on a channel-by-channel basis. In addition, modern interfaces and protocols allow open and flexible connectivity.

With its 15 MS/s/ch sample rate on all 8 input channels simultaneously, SIRIUS XHS allows test engineers to perform every possible power test in e-mobility and electric cars today, with more than enough bandwidth and dynamic range. Since electric vehicles are the future of transportation, nothing could be more important. But the technology can be applied to scientific measuring in general, so it has applications in power, energy studies, physical measurement and more across virtually all industries, including aerospace, automotive, shock & vibration and acoustic studies, industrial tests and many more.

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NexION 5000 MultiQuadrupole ICP Mass Spectrometer PerkinElmer PerkinElmer’s NexION 5000 multi-quadrupole ICP-MS – the first in its category to boast four quadrupoles – is engineered to remove the most complex interferences and address the most challenging applications in traceelemental testing. It takes ICP-MS performance beyond high-resolution ICP-MS and traditional triple-quadrupole technology, delivering exceptionally low parts-per-trillion background equivalent concentrations.

The spectrometer can be used in a variety of trace-elemental applications, from those requiring the lowest detection limits, such as the measurement of impurities in electronicgrade chemicals used in semiconductor device fabrication, through to the analysis of complex high-matrix samples, such as biological fluids.

The unique combination of its tandem fourquad design and other proprietary technologies provides the most efficient spectral interference techniques, delivering parts-per-quadrillion (ppq) detection limits and up to 12 orders of magnitude linear dynamic range.

The unique, tandem four-quad design of the NexION 5000 ICP-MS provides the best ion beam control, capable of suppressing and eliminating spectral interferences found in complex samples, for the best background equivalent concentrations (BECs) in hot plasma and outstanding method detection limits (MDLs).

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ANALYTICAL/TEST FINALIST WINNERS

Nortis ParVivo Platform Nortis Nortis is an innovator in the rapidly emerging Organ-on-Chip (OOC) field, which enables the engineering of living human tissues in microfluidic devices (chips).

These chips are highly valuable for both pharma and academia, both of which are looking for novel technologies that will enable them to move away from animal models to improve drug development efficiency and accuracy more humanely.

Right now, pre-trial research depends on time and labor-intensive in vivo models that slow down decision-making — and therefore slow down the drug development process. Not only does this mean that potentially life-saving drugs get to individuals more slowly, but this reduced efficiency often means higher costs for patients.

The Nortis ParVivo Platform helps researchers in industry and academia to carry out research focused on toxicity and drug safety in a more efficient, predictive, physiologically relevant, cost-effective, and robust manner. These efficiencies and benefits mean that drug development and research moves more quickly, and end patients get the therapies they need faster and cheaper.

RAPTR N95 Sandia National Laboratories The RAPTR N95, from Sandia National Laboratories, is a reusable respirator intended for medical applications designed for rapid producibility using standard injection molding processes. The unique structure of this respirator permits the components to be disassembled for sterilization, decontamination, and replacement. This respirator employs a passive resonator to transmit the wearer’s voice and can be replaced with a port for fit certification. During fit certification an evaluator verifies the mask does not open while the person wearing the mask performs a series of actions.

The respirator body is composed of a soft structure intended for prolonged use and comfort. Air is filtered during both inhalation and exhalation. N95 filter media selection is at the discretion of the user, improving supply chain dependency and eliminating dependence on single source N95 filter media seen in half mask respirators today. Unlike popular half-mask respirators, the filter media is held in a protected structure to prevent contamination/damage from biological or chemical hazards.

The RAPTR N95’s performance has been verified by quantitative fit testing on multiple wearers, using OSHA-required fit testing procedures.

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Model 261 Deep Ultraviolet Diode Laser Module UVC Photonics Because of their excessive size, weight, power, cost and environmental sensitivity, continuous wave deep ultraviolet lasers have long been exclusively laboratory devices. The Model 261, from UVC Photonics, is an entirely new approach to deep ultraviolet lasers. Several years of development has resulted in a rugged, compact and low-cost module suitable for integration into fixed, portable and handheld instruments.

Deep ultraviolet lasers have many applications in materials science, life sciences, threat detection and sterilization. Most of these applications have been confined to laboratory demonstrations due to the lack of availability of a suitable laser source. The Model 261 has enabled these applications and many new products, including a portable UV Raman device for hazardous materials identification and an automated sterilization system to combat coronavirus.

The lasers are the world’s only deep ultraviolet diode laser modules. They are OEM components which provide greater than 10 mW of continuous wave output at 261 nanometers.

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ANALYTICAL/TEST FINALIST WINNERS

The Solvere CSD

PhotoCube

Activated Research Company

ThalesNano ComInnex

The Solvere CSD, from Activated Research Company, is a new LC detector used for scientific instrumentation that produces a linear response to all non-volatile organic compounds using flame ionization detection (FID) and a novel separation-reaction method. The result is a detector with an unparalleled linear range, high sensitivity and a universal and uniform carbon sensitivity to non-volatile organics.

The detector addresses several of the pain points that exist with current market offerings.

The most important and unique feature is the universal response to all non-volatile organic (carbon-containing) molecules. When compared with other LC detectors, Activated Research’s technology promises a larger universal response with a desirable balance of simplicity and ruggedness. This translates into more comprehensive and accurate analyses from a single detector, allowing pharmaceutical scientists the ability to see all drug molecules and scale up production without the risks associated with undetected molecules.

Current Applications for the Solvere include proteins and peptides, sugars and carbohydrates, polymers, biopharmaceuticals, surfactants, EO/PO and many more analytical applications are under way in the lab.

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The PhotoCube, from ThalesNano and ComInnex, is a multi-wavelength benchtop photoreactor designed for advanced photochemical reactions.

Various configurations can be applied to a diverse set of batch, flow and stop-flow photochemical reactions. Options for multicolor and UV LEDs enable you to apply up to 7 wavelengths, in addition to white, even simultaneously. The combination of batch and flow applications in one instrument is unique in the market.

Photochemistry is a branch of chemistry which utilizes UV or visible light to promote chemical reactions (to break or construct new chemical bonds). It allows (organic) chemists and researchers to perform photochemical transformations by subjecting reaction mixtures to UV and/ or visible light irradiation under a diverse set of regulated batch and flow conditions (wavelength, intensity, time, temperature).

Historically, synthetic organic photochemistry has provided an extremely powerful method for the conversion of simple substrates into often complex products. In a modern context, as organic photochemistry uses no reagents or catalysts, it is one of the key technologies for clean synthesis.

TruTag’s Edible Barcodes TruTag Technologies TruTag is the scalable smart medicine solution. Its “edible barcodes,” made of spectrally encoded silica particles, are supplemented by a mobile app that can verify their authenticity, secure the pharmaceutical supply chain and improve patient adherence.

Counterfeit drugs are a major problem for the pharmaceutical industry, both in terms of financial impact and in compromising patient safety. Current traceability and security measures focused at the packaging level are not enough to deter fraud. Not only can packaging-level solutions such as barcodes be easily replicated, but pills can also be readily separated from their packaging and replaced with counterfeits.

By incorporating TruTags, the pill itself effectively becomes a barcode which can be digitally scanned and recorded, providing instant authentication.

By enabling the mass digitization of drugs, TruTag’s solution can be applied to a range of applications including safeguarding drug quality and safety; improving patient engagement; and improving medication adherence.

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ANALYTICAL/TEST FINALIST WINNERS

GUIDE (Guided Ultrasound Intervention Device)

Potent and Effective Synthetic SARS-CoV-2 Neutralizing Nanobodies

MIT Lincoln Laboratory Massachusetts General Hospital

Sandia National Laboratories

GUIDE, from MIT Lincoln Laboratory and Massachusetts General Hospital, is the first technology that enables a medic or EMT to catheterize a central vein or artery rapidly and accurately in a pre-hospital environment and save lives from trauma injuries. GUIDE performs the key step of inserting a needle in the vessel, after which a medic can readily complete catheterization. There is a critical need for GUIDE technology for both military and civilian medical care, with approximately 150,000 U.S. civilian deaths each year from trauma. Traumatic injuries result in more years of life lost for U.S. civilians than cancer or heart disease. Hemorrhage is the leading cause of preventable death and rapid, pre-hospital vascular access is a key to reducing the number of deaths. GUIDE is the result of extensive iterative development and testing on phantoms and porcine hemorrhage models.

The technology’s primary access vessels are the femoral vein and artery, but the technology can also be applied to the internal jugular and peripheral veins.

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The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 resulted in 176 million cases, 3.81 million deaths, and an estimated global economic cost of over 10.3 trillion dollars. As variants of SARS-CoV-2 emerge, it is essential to possess a diverse set of preventative and therapeutic tools to maintain the progress made toward ending this pandemic. While vaccines are proving successful, antibody therapeutics are emerging as a critical tool in preventing those who are infected from becoming severely ill. Sandia researchers have identified and characterized several anti-SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing nanobodies (VHH) from a Sandia-designed proprietary next generation synthetic nanobody phage display library.

Nanobody-based humanized (hu) heavy chain antibodies (nanobodyhuFc) were produced, for the top 54 nanobodies identified, as a fusion to the hinge region and crystallizable fragment (Fc) domain of a human immunoglobulin G (IgG)1. This combines the advantages of nanobodies with the improved half-life and effector functions of human IgG while reducing the overall size by half that of a conventional antibody, making them easier to produce and better able to circulate to and penetrate target tissues in the body.

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INER Institute of Nuclear Energy Research

https://en.iner.gov.tw Nuclear safety and nuclear back-end Radiation applications for people’s livelihood Green energy and system integration

The advertising budget comes from the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST),

The Low-Dose 3D X-ray Imaging SystemTaiwan TomoDR

Low-Cost Electrochromic EnergySaving Window

Taiwan TomoDR is a 3D digital tomosynthesis(DT) imaging system that is superior to conventional DT machines and can provide CT(computed tomography)-like images at low exposure doses.

TomoDR has an innovative multi-directional scanning function, such as head(H)-to-foot(F) and left(L)-right(R) directions, and can collect X-ray projections from each scanning direction for image reconstruction, which retains more image information and improves image quality compared with conventional DT machines. The mechanism design allows for easy switching between supine/standing 3D imaging modes according to different needs. Clinical trials for vertebral compression fracture diagnosis have shown that TomoDR can significantly increase the clinical information available to the physicians during interpretation and improve the accuracy of diagnosis. In a simple and quick workflow, and at a low exposure dose, TomoDR offers high-quality multi-slice images to visualize the part invisible for conventional 2D X-ray images.

The Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER) has successfully established a rapid deposition machine for producing electrochromic glass. The machine equipped with a unique high-density plasma deposition system and was able to steadily mass-produce electrochromic glass with high transmittance. Although the cost of the machine is only 1/3 of that of a traditional magnetron sputtering system, its deposition rate is increased by 4 times. On April 9, 2021, Licon and INER signed the “Technologies of large-area electrochromic film deposited by high-density plasma” licensing agreement, with a contract value of NT$16 million. With the cooperation and efforts of INER and Licon, the production and distribution speeds of electrochromic products in Taiwan can be accelerated, and the related products can enter the global market. It is a new chapter of the energy efficient technology in Taiwan and can contribute to achieving the goals of “green economy” and “environmental sustainability” in Taiwan's energy policy.

Electrochromic windows (20 × 30 cm2). Left: un-tinted glass. Right: tinted glass. The percentage of variation rate of visible light is 50 %.

Novel Hexa-Lactoside Derivative as Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Imaging Agent for Liver Receptor with Ga-68 Competent residual liver function is crucial to patients’ survival from liver diseases. As a significant difference exists between the number of asialoglycoprotein receptors on the parenchymal cell membrane of a normal liver and a diseased liver, asialoglycoprotein receptor imaging can be used to differentiate normal and diseased livers sensitively. INER Dolacga Kit as a tool for evaluation of liver reserve has proven in a phase I clinical trial to be highly liver-targeting and safe, and is expected to provide more accurate evaluation of residual liver function than most existing imaging technologies and replace them. INER Dolacga kit has world-wide patent map and has been developed to give lyophilized formulation that can be used for PET imaging after simple and fast (15 min) Ga-68 labeling. The labeled product specifically targets to liver receptors with high sensitivity and low background level. Convenient and rapid labeling (15 minutes), short half-life of Ga-68 (environmentally friendly), and stable (favorable to global distribution) are the key features and are advantageous to product commercialization.

Hundred-kW-scale Microgrid System INER established the first hundred-kW-scale microgrid demo site in Taiwan, which is connected to high-volt feeder of Taiwan Power Company (TPC). This microgrid can receive the instructions from TPC to execute power dispatch, such as load shedding, grid disconnection, and grid connection. While connected to the main grid, the microgrid can steadily export power of 100kW, and keep providing 4-hour auxiliary services. Under grid-disconnected (islanded) mode, the average power generated by the renewable energies accounts for 54%, while the microgrid can still operate steadily by the Energy Management System (EMS), which serves as a base for development of technologies of regional grid with high penetration renewable energies in the future.

Solution Printing Process Technology for Flexible and Transparent Polymer Solar Cell Modules The Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER) has pioneered a roll-to-roll continuous coating process for the mass production of the large-area flexible semitransparent polymer solar cells (PSCs), which overcomes the bottleneck of the traditional laboratory-scale spin-coated PSC technique unable for large-area module manufacturing (i.e., upscaling). The above-mentioned process combines slit-die coating with roll-type continuous coating process, and successfully implements a fast and universal process to coat each film layer on a flexible PET substrate. The large-area flexible transparent PSC module developed by INER accomplishes efficiency up to 6% and transparency of 50%, so it can be fully attached to the transparent plastic agricultural greenhouse to achieve the vision of agrivoltaics.

The flexible transparent polymer solar cell module developed by INER

Technologies for Solid-State Lithium-Ion Batteries In the development of solid-state lithium-ion battery, INER has developed a roll-to-roll production technology of polymer electrolyte films and an atmospheric plasma spraying (APS) technology of high areal capacity cathodes for future solid-state lithium-ion battery applications. A high safety, high-capacity, and cost-effective polymer electrolyte lithium-ion battery has successfully demonstrated a 3.8 Ah capacity with a LiNi0.8Co0.1Mn 0.1O2 (NCM811) cathode and a graphite anode. Furthermore, high deposition rate of the high areal capacity APS cathode has also been achieved with a deposition rate of 5,400 nm/min. After assembling a solid-state lithium battery, the APS cathode has demonstrated a high areal capacity of 6.09 mAh/cm2 on a single side substrate, which is also the best areal capacity performance to date. We believe these technologies are the possible candidates for the future production of solid-state lithium-ion batteries.

Schematic Diagram of Integrating INER's Technology for PLA Production and Chemical Recycling Using diverse and abundant non-grain biomass as feedstock is one of the key characteristics of INER's polylactic acid (PLA) production technology. Unlike starch and sucrose, more processes with advanced technologies for pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass are required to produce optically pure L-lactic acid and D-lactic acid, which can be further polymerized into PLA. Moreover, INER has also developed a chemical recycling technology that can decompose PLA back into lactic acid without adding any chemicals. The regenerated lactic acid can be polymerized again into brand new PLA. Looking forward to the future, INER will continue promoting the environmentally friendly bio-plastics, such as PLA and PHAs for versatile applications using self-developed technologies.

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IT/ELECTRICAL FINALIST WINNERS

Cloud-based Smart Point Cloud Processing (CSPCP)

Field-Programmable Imaging Array

National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC) of National Applied Research Laboratories (NARLabs) National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Tunghai University

MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Cloud-based Smart Point Cloud Processing (CSPCP) is the world’s first smart point cloud processing technology built on the cloud, which automatically corrects abnormal colors in point clouds and increases the rendered image quality through cloud services, accurately recreates digital three-dimensional (3D) scenes and accelerates developments in historic preservation, visual production, construction inspections and craniofacial reconstruction. It has an accuracy level of 95%, and its recognition rate is 100 to 600x higher than that of other state-of-the-art recognition algorithms.

Image fidelity is beyond the current technologies, with no upper limit in points displayed and no scanning traces.

The technology boosts the profits by 210% and lowers the cost by 97%. It promotes sustainable development as reusable point cloud models can replace physical sets that go to waste after shooting, which not only helps with the development of the entertainment and education industries but also meets the sustainable development goals (SDG) of the United Nations in responsible consumption and production.

The Field Programmable Imaging Array (FPIA) is a first-inclass device that allows designers of niche sensing applications access to unprecedented on-chip computational resources.

The reconfigurable nature of the FPIA allows designers to mix and match disparate functionality to create innovative solutions to problems. Once a front end for a specific detector type is integrated, the design cycle for new applications of that detector type is greatly shortened from the existing status quo, allowing quick prototyping of new system concepts.

The objective of the FPIA is to serve processing-intensive imaging applications by creating a stacked architecture with a highly capable reconfigurable digital component that can be adapted to any type of optical detector. The high cost of this advanced digital component can be amortized over multiple applications, while enabling capabilities that would be otherwise out of reach.

The FPIA is a first-of-its-class device. It makes highperformance on-chip digital processing and field-programmability available to a broad spectrum of new imaging applications.

Multiplicity Counter for Thermal and Fast Neutrons (MC-TF) Radiation Monitoring Devices (RMD) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Defense Threat Reduction Agency The Multiplicity Counter for Thermal and Fast neutrons (MC-TF), from Radiation Monitoring Devices (RMD), is a field-deployable device first responders can use to quickly assess in real-time and with high confidence the threat level posed by a suspected nuclear weapon. It is designed to detect time-correlated fast and thermal neutrons unique to special nuclear material (SNM), the core of a nuclear weapon.

The MC-TF is a first-of-its-kind technology that offers unprecedented access to fission-chain evolution data. The MC-TF leverages 90 state-of-the-art scintillators. Half are meant for fast neutron detection and the other half are for thermal neutron detection. Should a first responder ever need to immediately determine whether an unknown source of radiation is in fact SNM and obtain its fissile-mass and multiplication – the MC-TF can quickly and with high confidence make that determination, which greatly aids the response protocol process. The MC-TF breaks the barrier for neutron multiplicity counter response time and event-time interval analysis when compared to the state-of-the-art He3-based system.

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IT/ELECTRICAL FINALIST WINNERS

SmartTensors AI Platform Los Alamos National Laboratory The SmartTensors AI Platform, developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is a scalable, unsupervised machine-learning software suite capable of identifying, extracting essential hidden features, and efficiently compressing information in massive datasets. SmartTensors autonomously analyzes and discovers hidden features, signatures and patterns otherwise undetectable and buried in tens of terabytes of data.

Big data surrounds us and is growing exponentially bigger, requiring massive storage and processing power. Crucial bits of information and signals are frequently overlooked and lost in the noise because traditional tools cannot process extra-large data and extract hidden signals from it. Researchers at Los Alamos have developed multilingual software, the SmartTensors AI Platform, to keep up with this onslaught of knowledge. The unique platform’s capabilities include latent feature extraction, dimension reduction, pattern recognition, anomaly detection, data compression, and text mining.

SmartTensors has been applied effectively and impactfully to medicine, disease spread analysis/prediction, energy extraction, carbon sequestration, climate change, economic analysis, infrastructure stability and national security. SmartTensors can be used on laptops, desktops, supercomputers and cloud platforms.

Optical Transconductance Varistor

Spectrally Efficient Digital Logic

Opcondys Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

MIT Lincoln Laboratory

The Optical Transconductance Varistor (OTV) is a light-triggered semiconductor power switch enabling higher switching speeds than competitors at previously unattainable voltages to facilitate more efficient grid-scale power conversion, reduce expensive, environmentally damaging energy losses and generate the voltages required for medical proton therapy or air disinfection.

The OTV significantly improves upon current smart grid devices used to control electricity delivery. The OTV maintains higher output power at higher switching frequencies and shorter pulse widths than competitors, therefore shortening the off-to-on transition to cut energy losses in half compared to today’s transistors. In fact, if widely adopted, the OTV could save one billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year and eliminate 750 tons of greenhouse gases annually, by 2050. OTV’s unique design enables devices to be combined to virtually any voltage and current, reducing size, weight and capital cost for smart grid equipment. With the expansion of the smart grid and introduction of renewable energy supplies, the OTV will be critical in providing the reliability and efficiency to integrate alternative energy, manage energy demands, speed power restoration after blackouts and improve grid security.

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Spectrally Efficient Digital Logic (SEDL), designed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory, is a set of digital logic building block families that can reduce overall product development costs by operating with intrinsically low EMI emissions. Lower EMI emissions can simplify PCB design and increase the likelihood of passing an EMI test on the first attempt. Low EMI logic also provides a level of emission security to protect valuable assets from adversarial eavesdropping attacks. The design is very tolerant of noise, distortion, and logic glitches that might trip up traditional logic.

SEDL can operate properly through logic glitches, which can be time consuming to fix in traditional logic systems. SEDL is designed to be compatible with traditional logic, giving designers the freedom to construct systems comprised entirely of SEDL components or a hybrid of traditional logic and SEDL. SEDL is intended to provide low EMI digital logic functions at comparable size, cost, and clock speed with respect to traditional logic.

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IT/ELECTRICAL FINALIST WINNERS

Free-space quantum network link architecture MIT Lincoln Laboratory

MIT’s free-space quantum network link architecture enables efficient and high clock-rate generation, synchronized distribution and high-fidelity remote interaction of entangled photons across free-space links. These architecture capabilities are needed for development and realization of emerging quantum network applications such as networked quantum computing and enhanced distributed synchronization and sensing.

In contrast to previous architectures, its free-space quantum network link architecture focuses on solving all the challenges simultaneously, enabling the architecture to be used for deployed free-space systems to develop quantum network technology applications.

The system relies upon three primary technologies. MIT has developed a GHz clock rate, three-stage pump laser system; an entangled photon generation crystal that generates spectrally pure and long-duration entangled photons; and a pump-forwarding architecture that allows for synchronization of quantum systems across free-space links with high precision. These systems all combine unique characteristics that are not found in competing technologies.

MIT’s system demonstrates these three technologies and goes a step further by integrating them all together into a full system demonstration of a free-space quantum network link architecture.

Lab-on-a-Fish Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Lab-on-a-Fish is a wireless, miniaturized underwater technology system that provides real-time monitoring of fish and small aquatic species in marine, freshwater and estuarine habitats. The PNNL technology is the first in the world to combine edge computing with wireless acoustic sensing to assess animal behavior (acceleration and gyration); physiology (electrocardiogram and electromyogram); and environment (temperature, pressure, and magnetic sensor).

Lab-on-a-Fish allows correlations to be made about the behavior, physiology and environmental parameters of tagged animals to study underlying biological processes. By using a wide array of sensors, ecologists can study small species for longer durations— something that has not been possible with other technologies.

The technology is already being modified and leveraged for use with other animals, including birds and bats, to mitigate wildlife interactions with wind turbines. In the future, Lab-on-a-Fish could be used as a proofing ground for human health monitoring, which could open new, preventive and diagnostic care for humans.

Nalu micro-implantable pulse generator (mIPG) Nalu Medical The Nalu mIPG system is a miniaturized implantable pulse generator (mIPG) for treating chronic pain.

The implant is 9 to 27x smaller than the commercially available implantable pulse generators (IPGs) yet delivers treatment outputs similar to larger IPGs but with additional capabilities around advanced waveforms, programming and upgradability.

The Nalu mIPG offers the clinical and practical benefits of a battery-free, minimally invasive implant without compromising on pain relief or therapeutic capabilities. Nalu incorporates multiple design factors not previously used in chronic pain IPGs, such as externalizing the battery and using a SoC design, which permits a dramatically smaller implant. State-machine architecture allows almost infinite flexibility and upgradability of system capabilities.

The Nalu system offers a smaller size that translates into a less invasive procedure and the potential to reduce postimplant complications. Also, an external, wireless power supply eliminates battery replacement surgery. A highly configurable microchip is future-ready and the Nalu can be controlled by a smartphone.

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IT/ELECTRICAL FINALIST WINNERS

Quantum Scientific Computing Open User Testbed (QSCOUT) Sandia National Laboratories QSCOUT provides scientists free and complete access to the only open quantum computing testbed based on trapped ions in the world. It gives the scientific community a new level of programming control and execution for improving quantum computer science.

Quantum information processing has reached an inflection point transitioning from proof-of-inciple scientific experiments to small, noisy quantum processors. To accelerate this process and eventually move to fault-tolerant quantum computing, it is necessary to provide scientists with access to “whitebox” testbed systems. QSCOUT provides them unique access to an innovative system to help advance quantum computing science. Quantum operations are based on “gates,” which manipulate the states of the quantum objects and can be performed in a variety of ways. QSCOUT allows low-level access to the gate implementations themselves via the licensed firmware Octet, which allows users to test how different types of gates impact system performance. Additionally, by using the quantum programming language Jaqal (Just another quantum assembly language), users can now precisely specify the timing of gates to study how new ways of gate scheduling might improve performance.

Infinitum Electric Air-Core Motor

kNOw Touch

Infinitum Electric

Hong Kong Productivity Council

Infinitum Electric’s Air-Core Motors use lightweight materials and modular design to generate the same power in half the size and weight, at a fraction of the carbon footprint of conventional motors. Infinitum Electric motors offer a fully integrated system: motor, variable frequency drive (VFD) and embedded IoT in a single compact package.

Infinitum Electric developed an axial flux air core permanent magnet electric motor that is lighter, quieter and more efficient than conventional electric motors with the same power rating. Infinitum Electric’s motors are already being introduced in commercial HVAC systems, pumps, consumer appliances and hybrid electric vehicles, but the company’s vision is to make the IE motor the heart of every machine in the world - from vacuum cleaners to electric vehicles and electric airplanes.

IE’s R&D reimagined motors were built around the needs of humankind for the next century with sustainability, noise reduction and ease-of-use in mind.

Minimizing contact with objects has become an essential part of antipandemic efforts. The kNOw Touch contactless panel lessens the risk of coronavirus transmission in elevators by enabling touchless sensing in the elevator controls. This cost-efficient technology only requires a small twist without the need of vast mechanical alteration to perform.

The product comprises an infrared touch sensor and relay control device. The infrared touch sensor emits the infrared beam to form the light curtain in front of the elevator button areas. The receivers of the sensor receive the infrared beam information blocked and reflected when an object enters the active area. It will determine the coordinate information according to the vertical and lateral displacement and map with the corresponding elevator control. The relay control device is deployed to communicate and interface with the elevator button control device.

The sensor and the relay control device communicate through a serial link while the relay control device and elevator button control devices communicate through the dry contact.

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IT/ELECTRICAL FINALIST WINNERS

Monolithic Fiber Array Launcher MIT Lincoln Laboratory Fiber arrays are used for constructing optical phased-array lasers, which are used in high-power industrial applications and beam steering for lidar. MIT has developed and built an all-glass, monolithic fiber array that is smaller and more robust than standard arrays.

Fiber arrays are used for constructing optical phased-array lasers that can enable power scaling and beam shaping for industrial applications and beam steering for lidar. MIT’s product is an all-glass, monolithic fiber array launcher that is both significantly smaller than traditional arrays and less susceptible to thermooptic effects, which allows scaling to much higher laser powers and channel counts. This technology uses novel techniques in glass machining and fusion to achieve the required precision. This monolithic device reduces complexity for industrial laser heads, which attempt to achieve the above-mentioned functionality with mechanical methods and is expected to have a relatively longer lifetime with higher reliability.

Small World AI LocationMind The University of Tokyo

Low Voltage Air Circuit Breakers World Super AE V Series C-class Mitsubishi Electric Corp.

LocationMind’s Small World AI, an artificial intelligence (AI) technologies integration system, has provided insights in various fields, especially for the COVID-19 situation in Japan. GeoSpatial data has played an important role in estimating the threats and impact of the pandemic and further aided stakeholders in swift decision-making.

In light of the multifaceted impacts of COVID-19, LocationMind has received several requests for GeoSpatial analytics from various parties. The technical capability to answer these multiple requests is very demanding.

Using the same dataset, the company is asked to analyze the population, life pattern, economic impact, disease spread simulation, population prediction, and optimization, just to name a few. The creators have developed individual analytics systems and started combining them to formulate a “Small World AI” to apply this to a broader audience, industry and themes. The analytics can also be used to identify the localized impacts, devise counterstrategies and recover from COVID-19 and the world Post-COVID-19. LocationMind’s ultimate quest in GeoSpatial analytics has no boundaries in the region, time and theme.

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Low voltage air circuit breakers guarantee the safety of electric power distribution systems such as those in buildings or factories.

It is the first circuit breaker in the industry that realizes open/ close operation using electro-magnetic solenoids. This leads to significant energy and labor saving while maintaining excellent economic efficiency.

Under the Paris Agreement, energy conservation efforts are being vigorously promoted. The electric power consumption of the motor is said to be a major contributor. To reduce this consumption, Mitsubishi has developed a new technology for increasing the force of electro-magnetic solenoids and enabling the replacement of the combination of motors and springs (electric springs) by the solenoids in areas that require instantaneous high-power. The first example applied is the low voltage air circuit breaker. This dramatically reduces energy consumption by eliminating inrush current and drastically reducing electric power supply time.

Furthermore, the new technology is so versatile that it will surely become the standard high-power technology for solenoids, and by applying it to other products, it can greatly contribute to energy conservation around the world.

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IT/ELECTRICAL FINALIST WINNERS

GridDamper University of Tennessee at Knoxville Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Electric Power Research Institute GridDamper is a field-deployment-ready technology to mitigate three major categories of oscillations (natural, forced and sub-synchronous) and allow more renewable electricity in power grids. GridDamper adaptively updates its parameters, sensors and actuators to guarantee power grid stability and reliability when renewable energy and electricity demand fluctuate.

The increasing integration of renewable energy has created more severe, complex and frequent oscillations. If not sufficiently controlled, they can lead to major blackout events that cost billions of dollars.

Effective suppression of various oscillations is essential to maintaining the secure and reliable operation of power grids.

One unique quality of GridDamper is its adaptive capability to select optimal sensors and actuators and update the controller parameters according to its realtime awareness of the grid operating condition. Also, GridDamper can handle various communication uncertainties to guarantee optimal performance.

This field-deployment-ready technology has been demonstrated through various hardware-in-the-loop tests using realistic large-scale power grid models and actual oscillation events. The field deployment at the TERNA control center (Italy) is happening.

Applying the continuous antimicrobial power of copper to painted surfaces

© 2021 Corning Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

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MECHANICAL/MATERIALS FINALIST WINNERS

A high-performance chromium-antimony absorber material for next-generation lithography photomasks The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) is a new technique for fabricating computer chips that uses an extremely small wavelength light (13.5 nm) and is capable of patterning very small features. One challenge of the new technology is that it requires new materials that can reflect this kind of light for patterning functional, precise photomasks.

The Molecular Foundry’s innovation addresses this challenge by providing a high-quality material for photomasks. The Foundry’s novel material not only delivers on the need for better optical resolution, but also significantly improves on the ease of patterning the material.

Chromium-antimonide (Cr-Sb) can be made by conventional sputter coating processes, making it cost effective and resulting in high-quality nanometer films and superior optical properties over the current standard tantalum-boron-nitride (TaBN) absorber materials. In addition, the new material can be patterned with a high degree of control and resolution; developers have demonstrated patterning feature sizes as small as 5 nm and aspect ratios that vastly exceed any future need.

AgriTraxx AirCore Gauge Tires

BIG NET

Superior Tire & Rubber Corp.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory ReactWell, Holocene Climate Corp.

The AgriTraxx AirCore is a high-performance polyurethane gauge wheel tire intended for No-till agriculture applications. No-till is a more efficient and sustainable farming method saving thousands of gallons of diesel fuel per farm, per year while producing greater crop yields over conventional till methods. The tire uses an innovative design and manufacturing method to allow the use of high-strength polyurethane elastomers which provide exceptional performance and long life in a variety of soil conditions and crop types.

Traditionally, gauge tires were made of simple air-filled or solid rubber that was prone to quickly wearing out and needing to be replaced multiple times per season.

Within the last decade, polyurethane was introduced to allow the tires to last far longer – however, the rigidity created new problems with seed placement and resulted in inconsistent crop yields.

Innovative solutions like the AgriTraxx AirCore solves both wear-life and seed placement problems by lowering maintenance costs and downtime while improving crop yields. The AgriTraxx AirCore is a major step in aiding the notill industry into become more desirable to farmers.

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BIG NET is a negative emission technology (NET) that captures carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere through direct air capture.

The technology involves a new class of absorbents called bis-imino-guanidines (BIGs) that absorb CO2 from air into aqueous solutions and convert it into crystalline carbonate salts.

BIG NET offers an energy-efficient and cost-effective solution to addressing climate change through direct air capture of CO2. Once scaled up, optimized and deployed worldwide, the technology has the potential to remove billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.

The recent National Academy of Sciences report on negative emission technologies highlighted the immense potential for direct air capture technologies, especially when their costs drop below $100/ton CO2: “Future economic demand for $100/ton CO2 direct air capture could be in the tens of gigatons per year.” Therefore, with an estimated cost of about $85/ton CO2, BIG NET has the potential to finally unlock the negative emissions market.

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MECHANICAL/MATERIALS FINALIST WINNERS

AMSil and AMSil Silbione

Solvite Garment Rejuvenator

Elkem Silicones

Milliken & Company Procter & Gamble

Elkem’s AMSil series is a new technology to make functional parts based on silicone elastomer by additive manufacturing (AM) and 3D printing (3DP). Thus, it is now possible to combine the performance, durability and biocompatibility of silicones with the unique possibilities offered by additive manufacturing.

New opportunities arise in the design and manufacturing of soft highperformance elastomeric parts and objects with a wide range of durable performances, unique properties and complex geometries, impossible to achieve using traditional processing techniques, by using 3D printing.

AMSil 20000 series is for use in industrial and food grade applications (aerospace, automotive, electronics, equipment and more) comprising one-part and multi-part systems. AMSil Silbione 24000 series is for use in restricted medical applications comprising multi-part systems.

The AMSil series will allow silicones to be used by AM/3DP in digital, connected and distributed manufacturing, a more efficient and sustainable production method. Furthermore, AM/3DP can personalize or mass customize products on demand in a cost-effective way from prototypes to low volume batch size runs of functional parts.

Solvite is the latest generation whitening technology jointly developed by Milliken and P&G. It can whiten and rejuvenate garments at ambient temperature through the laundry cycle without the use of bleaches. It was developed to encourage and support more sustainable laundry habits.

Solvite is a unique multifunctional ingredient that acts as both an antioxidant and a polymeric hueing agent for fabrics. It was developed to slow the aging of garments and to counteract the visual changes that accompany aging. Moreover, it is designed to selectively deposit on the areas of fabric most prone to undergo the aging process that leads to yellowing, enabling Solvite to restore the like-new appearance of white garments without adversely impacting the hue where yellowing is unlikely. It is an additive developed primarily for liquid laundry detergent but may be employed in other forms where the use of a traditional hueing agent adversely impacts the properties of the delivery form.

AeroMINE Sandia National Laboratories Westergaard Solutions, Texas Tech University AeroMINE (Motionless INtegrated Extraction) stationary wind harvesters provide safe, scalable, distributed electricity generation with no external moving parts. AeroMINEs easily integrate with buildings or operate stand-alone.

They can complement rooftop solar providing safe, affordable and reliable power to warehouses, box stores, commercial buildings, military bases and remote locations, massively reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

AeroMINE wind energy harvesters are designed to mount on leading edges of large format buildings. The leading

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edges of large building rooftops accelerate oncoming wind as it is directed up and over the building. AeroMINEs take advantage of this speed-up to produce additional power.

Because they have no external moving parts, they can be safely mounted just off the roof and made quite large. This means they can sweep a large area of wind, which is directly proportional to the maximum possible power that can be produced by wind energy devices.

AeroMINEs also offer power solutions for wind-rich remote installations to offset diesel-power generation with green, sustainable wind energy.

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GIBCO™ CTS™ ROTEA™ COUNTERFLOW CENTRIFUGATION SYSTEM FLEXIBILITY FROM INPUT TO OUTPUT Our multipurpose counterflow centrifugation system delivers exceptional flexibility in a cell therapy development and manufacturing system.

This closed system offers unmatched cell recovery, flexible input and output volume capability, and high throughput.

Make connections with an established partner.

Go to thermofisher.com/rotea

Intended use of the products mentioned on this page vary. For specifi c intended use statements, please refer to the product label. © 2021 Thermo Fisher Scientifi c Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks are the property of Thermo Fisher Scientifi c and its subsidiaries unless otherwise specifi ed. COL015908 0621

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MECHANICAL/MATERIALS FINALIST WINNERS

RE-Metal Idaho National Laboratory Recycling rare earth elements from high-tech devices typically involves a toxic process that’s banned in many countries, including the United States. Researchers at Idaho National Laboratory have developed a new environmentally friendly process known as RE-Metal that enables the recovery of rare earth metals from waste electronics and other sources.

RE-Metal helps solve an enormous challenge for U.S. manufacturers: enabling the environmentally friendly recycling of a limited supply of essential rare earth elements that are required for most of today’s high-tech devices. Currently, these manufacturers rely almost entirely on foreign nations for rare earth elements, jeopardizing the U.S. economy and its national security. Further, RE-Metal replaces a toxic process that’s banned in North America with one that requires less energy, produces few if any toxins, is sustainable and is more profitable. Additionally, bringing rare earth element recycling to the United States could create many jobs as the tech industry continues to require these valuable metals.

Autonomous Self-Healing Sealant

Delrin RA511CPE

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

E.I. DuPont de Nemours (Mobility & Materials)

Autonomous self-healing sealants self-repair microcracks and cuts, recover mechanical properties and adhere well to dusty surfaces.

They are formulated by mixing a low-cost additive into commercial sealants according to a process developed at ORNL. The treatment increases sealant lifetime and energy savings by lowering air and water leaks in buildings.

Even though sealants are established products that have widespread use, failures persist that lead to air and water leaks, costly repairs and high energy use in buildings. ORNL’s autonomous selfhealing sealants address the common failure modes in commercial sealants by self-repairing without a trigger and retaining high adhesion strength. Moreover, their solution can be easily adopted by sealant manufacturers because it entails incorporating a low-cost, self-healing polymer additive into their existing products; the laboratories’ approach involves a simple, efficient, and scalable process that requires minimal changes to current sealant manufacturing steps. Consequently, the autonomous self-healing sealant is a technology that can be quickly deployed to significantly increase the longevity and performance of sealants and to reduce energy consumption in buildings.

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As part of its 2030 Sustainability Goals, DuPont launched a new portfolio of sustainable acetal homopolymer grades, with the brand name of Delrin Renewable Attributed (RA). Delrin Renewable Attributed base polymer is produced from 100% bio-feedstock from second generation waste sources (not in competition with food or feed chain) according ISCC Plus mass balance certification, produced with 100% certified renewable electricity from wind and steam generated from municipal waste incineration.

This new offer combines the excellent mechanical properties of the Delrin portfolio, which are maintained with a world-class environmental impact profile (through a significant improvement in Global Warming Potential and reduction of non-renewable resources usage during manufacturing) and one of the lowest carbon footprints among engineering resins.

Customers can take advantage of this unique combination to reduce the CO2 emission associated with their products, by designing parts that are lightweight, less resource intensive, reliable for long term and circular.

The first commercial grade within the Renewable Attributed portfolio is Delrin RA511CPE, used for the manufacturing of laptop scissors mechanism.

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Coffee Bean Grinding Blade with Hard Amorphous Metal Coating Nano and Advanced Materials Institute Severin Asia NAMI has developed amorphous metal coating (AMC) on stainless steel, the industry’s first application for coffee grinding which drastically increases the hardness and toughness of the blade, resulting in four times lifetime improvement and leading to 50% finer grounds for silkier and more intense, robust coffee. In addition, the sharper and lower friction blade substantially lowers the heat generation during grinding, hence providing better thermal management for an improved overall coffee brewing process. After 10 minutes of coffee bean grinding, the temperature rise of an AMC coated coffee blade is 5-10° C less than that of a bare stainless-steel blade, resulting in a significant reduction of undesirable burnt taste.

Moreover, the coating process is environmentally friendly without generation of waste or pollution.

Besides this first application of AMC on high volume coffee grinding machines, AMC has huge potential for applications in many more industrial areas as a robust physical and corrosion protection layer, including kitchenware and other household consumer products.

Microhydraulic Motors MIT Lincoln Laboratory Microhydraulic motors are a new way of making things move on a microscale, providing a scalable actuation platform with a torque density that is two orders of magnitude higher than that of electric motors.

These actuators have the power to enable precision medical robotics to perform minimally invasive surgeries, shape-changing materials, or selffolding displays. Each microhydraulic motor consists of thin layers of solid sheets of polymer separated by fluidic drops, and these layers move relative to each other by internally modifying surface energy using electrowetting. They borrow in form and function from several actuating technologies, including capillary motors, electrowetting conveyors, multi-cycle electrostatic actuators, stepper motors, and biological muscle. Microhydraulic actuators improve on these technologies, however, because in addition to offering high torque and efficiency, microhydraulic actuators increase quadratically in power density when scaled to smaller dimensions and work at a relatively low voltage.

E-NANO FTHR-001 Resin Nano and Advanced Materials Institute Chung Yin New Materials (H.K.) Company NAMI nCoating provides a breakthrough technology for device manufacturers to meet the challenge of the flexible electronics boom. By virtue of the unique hard core surrounded by a flexible tail and functional group design, the transparent cover-layer provides a fusion with two opposite features: glass-like hardness (up to 9H) and plastic-like flexibility (500k cycles bending). The organicinorganic network in coating with a nano-size inorganic “glass” core surrounded by reactive organic “plastic” tails endows plastic films with toughness and ultra-thin glass with robustness.

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For CPI, the surface hardness is improved from 2H to 9H and coated CPI can withstand half million times folding; For UTG, the fragility in pen drop resistance is improved by nine folds in pen drop height and the coated UTG passes harsh bending tests with the bending radius of 1.5 mm. Both U.S. and China patents were filed which cover the nano structure design to synthesis method. NAMI’s nCoating product has already been launched into the market and the application development is under technical cooperation with several global display manufacturers.

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MECHANICAL/MATERIALS FINALIST WINNERS

DOWSIL TC-4060 Thermal Gel

GRSR

Dow Performance Silicones

Nano and Advanced Materials Institute Hongrita Plastics

DOWSIL TC-4060 Thermal Gel delivers a transformative combination of high thermal conductivity, softness and conformability with patented dispensability and stability to drive thermal management in vehicle electrification. Electrified vehicles (EVs) are gaining mainstream acceptance as manufacturers announce plans on electrified models to improve fuel economy and remain competitive as demand shifts towards efficient, cleaner vehicles.

Increase in higher power electronics is driving thermal management needs to improve efficiency and safety. DOWSIL TC-4060 Thermal Gel is based on proprietary technology to modify rheology and improve stability and represents a significant step change over incumbent materials.

TC-4060 provides significantly improved heat dissipation with higher thermal conductivity; long term retention of properties with patented stabilizers; and controlled rheology with automated dispensing process leading to high manufacturing efficiency.

Working closely with OEMS and Tier 1 Auto suppliers, Dow materials scientists translated the lifecycle application needs of high-performing EV designs to tailored product properties. These advances are critical to maintain safety and efficiency of “cannot-fail” power electronics drivetrain applications.

PPG HI-TEMP 1027 HD PPG PPG HI-TEMP 1027 HD is PPG’s next-generation ambient cure, high-temperature Corrosion Under Insulation (CUI) coating for carbon steel and stainless steel, reducing the risk of unexpected shutdowns.

Corrosion costs the global economy an estimated $2.2 trillion annually. Ten percent of total annual maintenance costs are dedicated to repairing damage caused by CUI. In addition to monetary cost, there is an environmental and human safety cost associated with CUI.

This innovative product prevents CUI with superior protection for extreme temperatures from -320° F up to 1200° F. Excellent hardness and corrosion resistance at ambient temperatures make it suitable for new construction projects.

HI-TEMP 1027 HD is resistant to dry operating windows up to 1200° F. HI-TEMP 1027 HD can also withstand thermal shock, cycling, intermittent immersion and boiling water.

The technological advance represented by this product delivers improved corrosion and weathering resistance at ambient and high temperatures while offering exceptional resistance to wear during the construction process. Its single coat, high-build application is fast to dry, reducing application time and increasing production efficiency.

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NAMI has invented a toxin-free, antibiofouling silicone for its biosafety and long-lasting germ-repellent efficacy with a permanent PEGylated repelling surface to impede bacterial growth. In contrast to conventional leachable germ-killing biocides, this novel material neither causes antimicrobial resistance nor disturbs microbiome balance by killing beneficial microorganisms.

Sustained, toxin-free, anti-biofouling silicone is now made available with NAMI invented germ-repellent modifiers comprising PEG-siloxane copolymers. In contrast to conventional toxic biocides which minimize bacterial growth through killing, GRSR inhibits the initial adhesion and subsequent biofilm formation, an essential step for bacterial propagation. This non-killing, yet repelling mechanism is the preferred way to offer antimicrobial features to baby products, which are always in contact with the oral microbiome and its balance should be preserved for health. In addition, there would be no threat to antimicrobial resistance and superbug formation. NAMI’s invention of this microbiome-friendly, anti-biofouling silicone and its application on baby products assure safety and hygiene for millions of babies, promoting healthy living from infanthood.

It will also be applied to other consumer products and thus benefit the society at large.

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Catalyzed Diesel Exhaust Fluid (CAT-DEF) Southwest Research Institute SwRI’s CAT-DEF is a novel technology that reduces harmful NOx and CO2 emissions from diesel-fueled vehicles and will help automotive manufacturers meet new EPA requirements and reduce air pollution emissions. This technology is revolutionary in that it is a new way of improving an existing fluid on-board a diesel vehicle, reducing NOX emissions and fuel consumption without negatively impacting hardware costs or durability. It is the only known technology that can meet future EPA and ARB NOx regulations without negative implications. CAT-DEF can further reduce NOx emissions and fuel economy in older diesel engines. Historically, DEF has been a commodity market, with all solutions having the same formulation of 32.5% urea and 67.5% water. CAT-DEF is a unique approach that takes advantage of this untapped market to drive technological improvements without requiring engine or truck manufacturers to spend more money developing and integrating new hardware. CAT-DEF technology also reduces cost of ownership to truck fleets and owneroperator over other technology evaluated to meet future emission regulations.

ELCRES HTV150 Dielectric Film

Ubiquitous Water Wand (UWAW)

SABIC Shin-Etsu Polymer Co.

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) Chyi Ding Technologies

ELCRES HTV150 film is the first engineering thermoplastic highvoltage, high-temperature film for DC link power capacitors capable of high energy densities over long periods of time without significant current leakage or charge loss. The film exhibits stable performance and offers excellent handling through metallization and capacitor building processes.

ELCRES HTV150 is the first capacitor film on the market engineered for stable performance at -40° C to +150° C and frequencies reaching 100 kHz, including stable capacitance, high insulation resistance, stable dielectric constant (Dk) and low dissipation factor (Df). SABIC’s HTV150 dielectric film has been validated by customers with both film-foil and metalized electrodes, including flat aluminum and patterned electrode designs. It can be processed on existing metallization, slitting, capacitor winding and squashing/flattening equipment.

The introduction of this film removes a weak link in the power train which is limiting the full capability of new inverter technology and supports significantly higher EV performance. This step change in performance can drive global transition to EVs which is a required element to solve climate change.

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Ubiquitous Water Wand (UWAW) is an ultrahigh efficiency vapor/air separation equipment which extracts clean water from the air we breathe.

It provides ultra clean drinking water without water sources, cooling media or water filters. In conjunction with an air-conditioner, UWAW can also provide buildings with dry air to save energy in air cooling.

The UWAW requires no piping, filtering or disinfecting devices, saving on maintenance labor and logistics. There are no heavy metals, toxins, pathogens or organic pollutants in the water. Also, dry air can be sent through AC systems to reduce energy consumption and create comfortable environments. The modularized unit has high scalability, providing up to 40 L/m2 drinking water per day.

UWAW has been realized by the joint efforts of ITRI’s and CHD’s, passed the lab tests, and is having the first unit under quality and endurance tests at a semiconductor factory in Taiwan. The developers believe that UWAW can help mankind to exercise their human right for clean drinking water anywhere in the world.

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MECHANICAL/MATERIALS FINALIST WINNERS

PPG BFP-SE Battery Fire Protection PPG Electric vehicles (EVs) have many advantages, including reducing the emissions that contribute to climate change and smog, improving public health and reducing ecological damage.

However, electric vehicles pose a new fire risk that must be efficiently and cost effectively addressed to allow safe and widespread adoption. Electric vehicles require protection from external and internal fires. Internal fires associated with battery thermal runaway events can be very high temperature, with high velocity and abrasive ejecta. Fire solution must protect the battery component, or compartmentalize the structure from these aggressive fire conditions. Available options provide some protection, however the industry has recognized current and emerging challenges that limit their effectiveness and usability. PPG BFP-SE is a high-performance battery fire protection total solution. This advantaged solution addresses current and emerging limitations challenges and compromises, enabling high-volume, cost-effective fire protection for electric vehicle batteries, by the compartmentalization of fire events, including external fires and most critically internal thermal runaway events.

SABIC’s High-Purity SD1100P Specialty Dianhydride SABIC SABIC’s high-purity SD1100P specialty dianhydride powder for polyimide (PI) film formulations can be used in 5G flexible printed circuit boards (PCBs), colorless displays and other flexible electronics applications.

This specialty dianhydride powder helps customers produce high molecular weight PI formulations that can deliver improved balance between thermal and mechanical properties.

SABIC’s new SD1100P specialty dianhydride powder offers superior performance properties versus other types of dianhydrides and enables production of enhanced polyimide films and varnishes. This dianhydride powder helps customers produce high molecular weight polyimide formulations that can deliver improved balance between thermal and mechanical properties. The new powder also improves processability to help polyimide manufacturers to extend the limits of film performance for demanding 5G applications by reducing the amount of heat, pressure and time required to laminate materials.

The powder enables the synthesis of specialty polyimide resins that can be used in products such as advanced flexible electronics. This building block supports polyimide film producers to help address requirements driven by 5G applications, including thinner, more compact, higher data throughput, low latency electronics.

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IS-P4 Separator-free Lithium-ion Battery Nano and Advanced Materials Institute Amperex Technology

NAMI and ATL have developed a separatorfree lithium-ion battery (LIB) technology with a breakthrough nanofiber conformal coating on the electrode. The separator affects cell performance and safety. Reports show that the separator layer accounts for 7-10% of the price of the cell and the global demand for separators is expected to be over $1.3 million in 2025, indicating the importance and value of this polymer thin film in the battery design. The ultrathin and thermal stable nanofiber coating can provide the battery with high energy density, robust cycle and rate performances, leading the products on the market.

This achievement is attributed to the quadruple material properties, such as thickness reduction bringing electrodes in close proximity (<7um) but achieving desired dielectric performance. Superior adhesion to electrode (>10N/m), reducing the thickness change after long cycling, high porosity (>80%, max.) and superior electrolyte wettability for long and stable cycle performances. The separator-free design is achieved by skin coated nanofibers encapsulating the electrode.

This architecture removes the need for a free-standing separator to achieve the best operating and safety performance.

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HSG Thermal Management Pad Nano and Advanced Materials Institute HFC Industry Design for thermal management equipped with high frequency electromagnetic (EM) wave shielding ability, HSG series thermal conductive pad, based on superparamagnetic nanoparticles induced graphite as thermal conductive fillers, provides 2-4 folds increase in thermal conductivity and outperforming EM wave shielding ability (30-50dB), leading the current product on the market.

HSG is developed by highly abundant and low-cost material, the natural graphite, as the superior thermal conductive fillers. NAMI optimized anisotropic (unidirectional) heat transfer effect is realized by magnetic field-induced material alignment technology with superparamagnetic nanoparticles to induce the graphite, giving desired alignment direction in a weak magnetic field, synergically improving the thermal conductivity and EM wave shielding performance.

Tackling the thermal and EM wave shielding in different frequency ranges is an emerging need for the market. HSG can provide a hybrid material solution to tackle EM wave interference together with superior heat transfer effect to cope with the changes for today’s technologically advanced electronics.

The Continuous Type Heat Treatment System Equipment for Micro Parts (CTHT)

Portable EnGineered Analytic Sensor with aUtomated Sampling (PEGASUS)

Metal Industries Research & Development Centre (MIRDC)

Los Alamos National Laboratory

The Continuous Type Heat Treatment System Equipment for Micro Parts (CTHT) is an exclusive heat treatment system equipment for micro parts, making them maintain a high collecting rate and an excellent mechanical property. In addition, the CTHT has the advantage of shortening delivery schedules and reducing production costs, further providing innovative solutions for the metal part industry.

The CTHT has been used for the heat treatment of micro screws on smart phones, mainly assisting parts manufacturers in finding the optimal conditions for the carburizing process of the screws, which is used to increase the torque and reduce the risk of fracture.

The global output value of micro parts is more than $4 billion. The CTHT can help industries such as heat treatment, precision machinery and metal parts to quickly find the optimal production process and schedule for small, diverse and customized micro parts. So far, the CTHT has been promoted in optoelectronic semiconductors, 3C products, medical machinery, robots, electric cars/motorcycles, aerospace and more.

PEGASUS is a portable, ruggedized, and simpleto-operate biosensor that detects a variety of important and biochemically disparate markers, including bacterial signatures, viral genetic material, toxins, and potential biothreat agents in less than 30 minutes. PEGASUS detects biomarkers from an array of environmental samples, bodily fluids, food supplies and more.

Biochemical analytical tools, diagnostics and highly trained laboratory personnel are not always readily available in resource-poor or remote areas. The lack of resources or the complexity of a sample should not limit our ability to respond to a biological event.

The system is simple to operate, uses a phone application for readout, and does not require highly trained personnel. It is packaged into a durable briefcase that includes nearly everything needed to perform assays in the field. Because the user-friendly, integrated system can run on a battery pack, PEGASUS makes laboratory-quality biological detection accessible to anyone, anywhere. It will lead to improved preparedness and response to biological risks across the world.

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Earth’s-field Resonance Detection and Evaluation (ERDE) Devices

Guardiant Corning

Los Alamos National Laboratory NMR spectroscopy is a powerful analytical technique to determine chemical structure, but the technology lags other forms of spectroscopy with respect to size, weight, cost and portability. Conventional high-field NMR employs large superconducting magnets that require liquid cryogens. Conversely, permanent magnet-based benchtop spectrometers could be portable but are heavy and suffer from resolution issues based on large line broadening intrinsic to magnetic field limitations. There is a strict tradeoff between portability and resolution in NMR systems.

To bridge these issues, the Los Alamos team created ERDE, a class of portable NMR spectrometers that leverage Earth’s magnetic field. By using Earth’s magnetic field, instrumentation demands are minimized and unique highresolution (<0.1 Hz) spectra are observable. ERDE offers portable structure determination of molecules with no background interference in a matter of seconds. ERDE revolutionizes fieldable NMR analysis with far-reaching applications for the fields of environmental sensing, through-pipe sensing, catalysis, chemical analysis, toxic chemical detection and more.

UCC: Ultraconductive Copper-CNT Composite Oak Ridge National Laboratory Ultraconductive Cu-CNT composite, a new class of high-performance conductors in which carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are incorporated into a copper (Cu) matrix, demonstrate improved electrical conductivity, higher current-carrying capacity, and improved mechanical properties compared to pure Cu. Growing demand for electrical energy and increasing need for more energy-efficient power delivery necessitates development of improved conductors that could provide enhanced electrical and thermal conductivity, higher ampacity and better mechanical strength. Such conductors will improve energy utilization through reduced ohmic losses, transport power with smaller and/or lighter-weight wires and cables, and enable better thermal management across system components, potentially resulting in immense technological, economic, and environmental benefits in all energy sectors. ORNL UCC technology couples the excellent properties of CNTs such as high conductivity and high strength together with novel methods to produce scalable assemblies of Cu-CNT multilayer composites. Relying on industry-standard equipment and inherently scalable manufacturing processes, the resulting UCCs offer innovative advances of improved electrical and mechanical properties over pure Cu. This suite of characteristics has never been possible in one product.

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Corning Guardiant is an antimicrobial additive that can be dosed into paints and coatings. Tests performed at the University of Arizona’s microbiology lab show that coatings containing Corning Guardiant can kill 99.9% of germs on coated surfaces, including the virus that causes COVID-19 within two hours.

Guardiant uses Corning’s expertise in glass ceramic technology, allowing copper, a well-known antimicrobial, to be incorporated into a variety of materials. These materials then adopt the antimicrobial properties of copper, consistently reducing germs on contact.

Corning is currently collaborating with leading paint and coatings manufacturers around the world to develop products containing Guardiant that meet government and regulatory requirements.

Corning intends to introduce Guardiant to material sets beyond paints, including clear coats, polymers and textiles, to further extend the antimicrobial benefits of copper to everyday surfaces. Coatings containing Corning Guardiant have distinctly demonstrated effectiveness under both wet and dry test conditions.

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PPG ENVIROCRON Extreme Protection Thermally Conductive Dielectric Powder Coatings PPG PPG has pioneered dielectric powder for electric vehicles to enhance their safety. ENVIROCRON Extreme Protection Thermally Conductive Dielectric Powder Coating is engineered to provide thermal conductivity in a dielectric material to enhance safety and performance. Used instead of film and/or tape solutions, this product supports high throughput and automated application.

ENVIROCRON enables electric vehicle manufacturers to operate at the high level of automation and high-yields necessary to support the rapid growth in electric vehicle adoption.

The powder coatings offer excellent electrical insulation performance and durability for longterm battery safety and thermal conductivity to enhance cooling efficiency.

The powder coatings are resistant to moisture ingress, creep and chemicals including Li-ion battery electrolytes. They are solvent-free for essentially zero air emissions during cure and generate almost no waste during application. And they are easy to automate for high-volume/highyield manufacturing.

PPG’s dielectric powder team dedicated significant thought and effort into overcoming technical challenges to deliver a new-to-market product that incorporates multiple critical functionalities into one robust and scalable product platform.

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Tough SmCo Ames Laboratory Electron Energy Corp.

Rare earth elements underpin the world’s strongest magnet, but the materials are brittle and frequently break during manufacturing, resulting in significant yield losses. Tough SmCo alleviates brittleness while maintaining magnetic performance through advanced microstructural designs that incorporate bimodal grain size distributions and maintain full compatibility with current magnet manufacturing processes.

Current Nd-Fe-B-based magnets require additions of dysprosium, one of the world’s most critical elements, to function at elevated temperature (>150° C). Sm-Co magnets are more powerful than the Nd-Fe-B-Dy magnets at these temperatures but are very brittle, difficult to machine, and require special systems for safe manufacturing and operation.

Researchers at Ames Laboratory discovered that doping the feedstock with small amounts of grain growth inhibitors improves the material’s flexural strength by 70% without noticeable change to magnetic properties. The slight change to the feedstock can be easily integrated with the existing manufacturing processes. Besides reducing chipping and cracking during manufacturing, assembly and operation, this technology enables Sm-Co magnets with odd sizes and shapes for ever more demanding applications.

Timken Split Tapered Roller Bearing for Mainshaft The Timken Co. The Timken Split Tapered Roller Bearing for Mainshaft is designed for uptower installation in wind turbine nacelles.

Non-split solid ring bearings require expensive ground-based cranes for bearing replacement. The Timken product has two halves that are installed using smaller uptower cranes and no blade removal, dramatically reducing costs and downtime.

Most wind turbines operate under very demanding conditions in remote areas and in harsh environments where access to repair equipment is generally not readily available.

Therefore, it is important for wind turbine machine components, including bearings, to have long lives, and be easy to replace if they become damaged with use.

Developing a bearing that is significantly less expensive to replace is beneficial to wind farm operators. The Timken split tapered roller bearing enables maintenance to replace faulty or damaged mainshaft bearings uptower without the need for expensive ground-based cranes. Smaller uptower-mounted cranes are all that is needed. The split bearing design prevents the need for blade removal, saving time and money and reducing risk of assembly errors.

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MECHANICAL/MATERIALS FINALIST WINNERS

Multi-functional Sorbent Technology (MUST) Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) Somerset International, The Dow Chemical Company Multi-functional Sorbent Technology (MUST) is a game-changing suite of sorbents that remove cationic (positively charged) and oxygencontaining anionic (negatively charged) heavy metals from aqueous and nonaqueous sources.

Such versatility and low cost make MUST highly effective to clean contaminated waterways and remove metals from electronic and pharmaceutical production processes.

The novel suite of MUST products offers a practical, affordable and green approach to recover critical materials (aluminum, cobalt, rare earth elements and others) and removes selenium, lead and other heavy metals that contaminate precious water supplies all across America — a threat that jeopardizes the health of millions of people, wildlife and our ecosystems. MUST has the added advantage of being regenerable and reusable, providing a recycling aspect that reduces waste, improves costs and makes it accessible to consumers and industries, including those specializing in water treatment (Somerset International) and others who plan pharmaceutical and electronic applications (Dow Chemical).

The Optical Transconductance Varistor Optimizing High Voltage Control with Light

www.opcondys.com Work sponsored by US Dept. of Energy ARPA-E under Contract DE-AR0000907

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Switching of 10’s of kilovolts at over 100 kHz with nanosecond response

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MOSFET–like control

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Efficiency gains in equipment for the Smart Grid

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Pulsed power for medical, industrial and research purposes

This groundbreaking technology, licensed from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, provides switching of utility line voltages at the speed of light.

Opcondys is bringing this capability to market to enable more efficient delivery of electrical power and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It may also be used anywhere fast, efficient switching of high voltage is required.

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Layered-Rocksalt Intergrowth Electrode Materials for Next-Generation Li-ion Batteries Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory The $30 billion-plus global Li-ion battery market is expected to double in the next five years.

Improved cathode materials will enable Li-ion batteries to operate reliably at high capacity and high voltage over repeated cycles without sacrificing performance, safety or cost.

However, existing options are hindered by material and performance degradation at high voltage, limiting their usefulness in many key applications.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s unique Layered-Rocksalt Intergrown Battery Electrode Material combines the advantages of Li-rich metal oxides of a cation-ordered layered structure with a cation-disordered rocksalt structure to offer a cathode material that ensures high capacity, fast charging time and energy transfer and superior cycling and thermal stability. Unlike its competitors, it can be synthesized under ambient atmosphere, easing processing and reducing production costs. Its thermal stability and minimal gas release help to address previous explosion and fire issues associated with Li-ion batteries. In addition, LBNL’s layered-rocksalt intergrown structure offers a new concept of cathode design, unlocking research potential on the solid phase boundary between the regions of layered and rocksalt structures for battery researchers.

PROCESS/PROTOTYPING RFID Yarn: Overcomer for 5 Major Durability Test

UHS rapid sintering

Taiwan Textile Research Institute

University of Maryland College Park HighT-Tech

Taiwan Textile Research Institute (TTRI) has developed the world’s first Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) yarn, which makes it full of applicative possibilities. RFID Yarn passes five major durability tests: anti-laundry, antiacid, anti-alkali, anti-high temperature and anti-roller pressure. TTRI initiated RFID Yarn Technology Industry Alliance to set up testing standards for newcomers.

To achieve RFID Yarn, the developers used a three-stage packaging technique for protection, antenna design, printing production, flip chip IC packaging and design and production of the fixed chip model. In addition, roll-to-roll design was adopted to double package RFID Yarn to make them thin and long membrane antennas. Finally, waving processing methods, such as false twist and weaving, were used to package the yarn a third time.

Taiwan has many chip factories who have a need for cleanroom suits and washing the clean-room suits. TTRI is cooperating with the biggest clean-room suits washing company in Taiwan and a data coding company to code information into RFID Yarn. The next step in this collaboration is to build up the access security system in their RFID Yarn.

The research team has invented and patented an ultrafast high-temperature sintering (UHS) process that can achieve record-high temperatures of up to 3,000° C and ultrafast heating rates of up to 100,000 ° C/minute via radiative heating. The UHS method can directly sinter oxide precursors into solid, dense ceramics in just seconds, more than 100–1000 times faster than traditional sintering.

Ceramics are widely used in electronics, energy storage and extreme environments due to their high thermal, mechanical, and chemical stability. The sintering technology of ceramics can be traced back to more than 26,000 years ago. However, the rapid development of modern technologies demands innovation in this ancient field, particularly the need for high-throughput and energy-saving ceramic sintering methods.

This technology was initially reported in Science and further developed as a product in 2020. It has raised significant interest from industry and government agencies. This ultrafast sintering technology can be used for a wide range of fields, including batteries, fuel cells, as well as metal and glass production.

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ADS Codex: Adaptive DNA Storage Codec Los Alamos National Laboratory Currently, warehouses the size of several football fields are used to store data on hard drives, and in the U.S. alone storage centers account for nearly two percent of the country’s electricity consumption. Soon the world will generate more digital data than it can store. Los Alamos researchers have turned to DNA to store more data in less space while consuming less energy than conventional media. The ADS Codex software provides functionality for both converting a binary data file into a sequence of DNA (encoding) and for converting sequences of DNA into binary

data (decoding). Molecular storage, and specifically synthetic DNA, is a rapidly evolving technology that provides high levels of physical data density and longevity for archival storage systems. The ADS Codex is an end-to-end codec demonstrated to achieve high bit density (0.99 bits of data per nucleotide) while successfully recovering data across a variety of industrial DNA processes for writing and reading data. The ADS Codex is fully accessible to all users through open-source software available on GitHub.

Bison

AI-Rad Companion Organs RT

Idaho National Laboratory

Siemens Healthineers

Bison helps engineers model fuel performance inside a nuclear reactor, allowing them to test different fuel configurations and optimize safety and efficiency. Nuclear power companies use Bison to create advanced simulations of the new fuel configurations required to power the next generation of more economical nuclear reactors.

Bison is a nuclear fuel performance analysis code that is unique in its ability to analyze fuels of varying types and geometries. By making advanced simulation more accessible to nuclear engineers, Bison helps enhance the safety and effectiveness of existing nuclear plants and the next generation of reactors.

Bison contributes to the push for clean, sustainable energy sources by facilitating the development and use of nuclear fuels in reactors, which will enable lower operating costs and greater energy efficiency. It also offers value to utilities, reactor or fuel vendors, regulators, researchers and advanced reactor designers. Dozens of entities already use Bison, including domestic and international companies, universities and national laboratories.

Siemens Healthineers’ AI-Rad Companion Organs RT is a comprehensive intelligent software that performs automatic segmentation of organs-at-risk at the level of consensus-based contours on computed tomography images for radiation therapy planning in cancer patients.

Many of the most commonly cancer-impacted organs such as the prostate, lungs, colon, rectum and breasts are supported with automated contouring. AI-Rad Companion Organs RT offers highquality contours at the level of consensus-based contours while potentially accelerating the contouring process. Such performance is achieved by leveraging state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) technology and a large amount of quality-assured and carefully annotated data. With the rise of cancer patients, automation offers excellent support in speeding up time-consuming routine tasks to free up resources and focus on more complex cases and patients. AI-Rad Companion Organs RT helps drive standardization across different individuals and institutions. A leap towards radiation therapy automation and faster therapy delivery for patients, where time can be a decisive factor.

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SOFTWARE/SERVICES FINALIST WINNERS

BLK247 from Leica Geosystems, part of Hexagon Leica Geosystems, part of Hexagon The Leica Geosystems BLK247 is a smart 3D surveillance system that uses sensor fusion technology — a combination of video cameras, thermal imaging, and LiDAR — along with edge computing and AI to instantly detect and report physical changes within a space.

The BLK247 is multi-sensor device that provides 360° horizontal by 270° vertical field-ofview coverage to monitor an entire space. It is radically changing security and surveillance by adding LiDAR, RGB video and thermal video with AI, edge computing, and sensor fusion technology to create a comprehensive smart 3D surveillance system. It complements existing investments in security technology by adding a vital layer of 3D protection. It also provides professionals in security or building operations with a more intelligent and more accurate system that alerts them to unauthorized or abnormal activity as it’s happening. The product is ideal for protecting private and public spaces, including facilities and private homes. The applications for the BLK247 range from security, surveillance, facility management and building operations to more creative and experimental uses.

Certara’s COVID-19 Vaccine Model Certara Certara’s COVID-19 Vaccine Model allows researchers to study how a vaccine is handled by the human body in computer-generated, virtual populations. It uses biosimulation (computeraided modeling and simulation integrated with pharmaceutical and biological science) to generate virtual populations with different ages, gender, weight, genetics, diet, illnesses and medications. It can then efficiently run virtual clinical trials using those virtual populations to help optimize the treatment regimen (dose amount, number of doses and dosing intervals) for COVID-19 vaccines.

These virtual trials can be conducted using actual patient data and virtual patient data much faster and at a lower cost than live clinical studies. As a result, the model can be used to streamline, optimize, and sometimes replace clinical studies. The model also allows virtual COVID-19 vaccine trials to be conducted that may be impractical or unethical to perform with real participants due to a range of recruitment challenges such as age, concurrent diseases or comedications.

Major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academia, and global regulatory agencies have been using Certara’s biosimulation technology for more than 20 years.

Commercial Routing Assistance Tool Idaho National Laboratory All Hazards Consortium During emergency situations, like the COVID-19 pandemic, state policies can change rapidly and differ substantially across transportation routes. The Commercial Routing Assistance Tool promotes transportation infrastructure and supply chain resilience.

It allows truckers, dispatchers and service providers to quickly and accurately identify and assess state actions impacting interstate travel.

The Commercial Routing Assistance Tool is an interactive website that maps routes and displays information about state government actions that can impact interstate transportation. The tool produces routes for commercial, emergency and disaster response vehicles to travel into or around various states in an efficient, compliant and safe manner. Drivers and dispatchers can use this tool to select and optimize routes that will reduce delays and risks generated by changing state restrictions rapidly and easily. The Commercial Routing Assistance Tool increases supply chain resilience and promotes emergency response as a free, single-source decision aid for real-time assessment of state actions that impact interstate transport.

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CICE Consortium Los Alamos National Laboratory, Danish Meteorological Institute, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences, National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Naval Postgraduate School, U. S. Naval Research Laboratory Stennis Space Center, University of Reading, University of Washington

CICE is a computational model that represents changes to sea ice and its interactions with the polar environment and ecosystems. CICE and its support infrastructure are the global standard for sea ice modeling across scales for multiple applications, including scientific research, climate modeling, forecasting and operations planning.

Polar sea ice is a critical element in moderating the global climate – its high reflectivity reduces heating by solar radiation, keeping our planet cooler. Sea ice also is fundamental for polar ecosystems, sheltering and feeding algae, the foundation for the polar food web. Predicting changes in sea ice’s location is essential for safe maritime operations and commerce. With research indicating sea ice is becoming more erratic, the need for accurate predictions is even more urgent.

Because of its versatile design and open-source framework, CICE’s technology underpins most sea ice models available today. Recent innovations such as landfast ice and Icepack’s unique modularity, hydrology, ecosystem and floe size distribution allow for more extensive, precise predictions of sea ice and the impact it has on local and global environments.

Flux: Next-Generation Workload Management Software Framework

Shadow Figment

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Shadow Figment software defends critical infrastructure and operational systems against devastating cyberattacks using interactive decoys mapped to real devices. Decoys convince attackers they’re making progress by sending real-time, plausible operational signals. With the attacker safely preoccupied, Shadow Figment alerts defenders and gathers information to respond appropriately — without affecting system performance.

Because control systems rely on physical rather than data processes, they are difficult to defend, allowing attackers to easily reengage and penetrate the real system. Shadow Figment generates and runs high-fidelity deceptions that use a simulation of the real process to respond to an attack in a realistic way. This slows attackers by diverting their attention and increases detection when attackers interact with the deceptive systems.

Through its current license with U.S.-based company Attivo Networks, Shadow Figments is already defending against increasing cyber threats to the energy sector by providing early and accurate detection, as well as forensics and response capabilities. It stands poised to revolutionize cyber defense for additional control systems and critical infrastructure.

Flux is a next-generation workload management framework for supercomputers, high-performance computing (HPC) clusters, servers in the cloud and laptops.

It combines fully hierarchical resource management with graphbased scheduling to improve the performance, portability, flexibility and manageability of scheduling and execution of complex scientific workflows on HPC systems both at the system and user level.

Flux manages massive numbers of processors, memory and other resources of a computing system and assigns the work requested by users — also known as jobs or workloads — to one or more available resources that complete the work, a method known as scheduling. A job is typically expressed in a script that contains a formal specification that requests resources, identifies applications along with their input data and environment and describes how to deliver the output data.

Workload management software like Flux is critical for HPC users because it enables efficient execution of user-level applications while simultaneously providing the HPC facility with tools to maximize overall resource utilization.

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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

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dGen National Renewable Energy Laboratory dGen is an open-source software that simulates customer adoption of distributed energy resources (DERs) through 2050. dGen is used by government and grid planning organizations to predict future energy systems at high spatial resolution and under diverse scenarios. It is an engine for equitably and cost-effectively integrating more DERs.

The opensource dGen software accelerates clean energy deployment by helping grid planners know where, when and how much will be adopted. For public services like governments, utilities and grid operators, growth in DERs is prompting important decisions around system planning: If they overbuild, the energy system is excessive and expensive, if they under-build, it could mean blackouts.

By NREL’s estimates, utilities misforecasting distributed solar PV alone could cost utility ratepayers up to $400,000/TWh. To provide the most reliable data, dGen creates high-spatial-resolution forecasts of DER adoption through 2050. dGen has published forecasts for landmark clean-energy efforts in major U.S. cities, informed equitable policies for low-income communities and is currently used by all major U.S. transmission system operators.

Floodlight Non-Targeted Analysis System Southwest Research Institute Floodlight is an artificial intelligencebased program for chemical discovery.

The software performs automated quality review of two-dimensional gas chromatography mass spectrometry data at accuracies comparable to human experts in a fraction of the time. Floodlight enables high-throughput, non-targeted analyses, screening chemicals present in food, drugs, consumer products and environmental samples.

Today’s modern analytical instruments allow chemists to determine every component in a sample without using a predefined list of targeted chemicals through what is called non-targeted analysis (NTA). Traditional targeted analysis only looks for a predefined list of compounds while missing everything else. Floodlight is the first application of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to non-targeted chemical analysis data processing for complex, gas chromatography mass spectral signals.

Floodlight consistently achieves the same accuracy as a human analyst and can dramatically reduce the time needed to process the data.

Floodlight will enable significantly broader use of NTA in applications ranging from energy and environmental testing to food and drug safety.

Eco-Mobility with Connected Powertrains Southwest Research Institute Toyota Motor North America, University of Michigan Southwest Research Institute developed Eco-Mobility with Connected Powertrains to achieve over 20% energy savings and reduced carbon emissions in connected and automated vehicles. This technology features algorithms, software and testing tools for route, speed profile and power flows to lower fuel consumption by leveraging vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure and other vehicle-to-everything technologies.

Current automotive technology has limited capacity to lower fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, or they tend to require major changes to the powertrain. SwRI’s Eco-Mobility with Connected Powertrains provides breakthroughs by both improving fuel efficiency and improving the methodology for testing and validating technology using real-world drive cycles. SwRI provides a breakthrough in fuel efficiency by leveraging software, connectivity and power management systems on current production vehicles.

This does not require changes to the powertrain of either electric/hybrid vehicles or internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. As the automotive industry moves toward more connected and automated vehicles and electrification, this breakthrough will help address needed improvements in fuel efficiency and reductions in emissions.

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LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

Solving National Security Challenges through Scientific Excellence

R&D 100 Awards and Special Recognition Awards Adaptive DNA Storage Codec CICE Consortium: Providing extensive, accurate sea ice modeling across scales Partners: CICE Consortium organizations

EpiCast: Simulating epidemics with extreme detail ERDE: Earth’s-field Resonance Detection and Evaluation devices Mochi: Providing scalable data services for high-performance computing Partners: Argonne National Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University, and The HDF Group

PEGASUS: Portable Engineered Sensor with Automated Sampling QED: Quantum Ensured Defense of the Smart Electric Grid Partners: Oak Ridge National Laboratory and EPB

Smart Tensors AI Platform Terra Spotlight: A new paradigm in rapid change detection using satellite images

For more information on scientific partnership and licensing opportunities, contact the Los Alamos National Laboratory Richard P. Feynman Center for Innovation

P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, NM 87545•505-667-5061•www.lanl.gov. An Equal Opportunity Employer managed by Triad National Security, LLC for the U.S Dept. of Energy’s NNSA for DOE and NNSA.

Additional Special Recognition Medal: Bronze Medal for Green Technology:

Finalist:

Accelerating Partnerships for Commercial Impact Los Alamos has identified a broad range of technologies that have the potential to enhance an existing product, define a new product, or launch a start-up. Our technologies can give organizations a competitive edge. Los Alamos Technology Snapshots identify technologies that are at different stages of development, some ready to license and others looking for a partner to help mature into a disruptive application.

CYBER SECURITY

Applying the unusual behavior of the quantum realm for scalable, plug-and-play communication to authenticate and encrypt power grid control signals on existing electricity distribution networks.

DATA ANALYTICS

Creating novel platforms to simulate epidemics with extreme detail for disease mitigation, to unsupervised machine learning to find hidden trends in massive datasets, to automatic identification of changes observed by multiple independent satellite imaging systems.

EARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

Advancing open-source capabilities needed for extensive, accurate sea ice modeling across scales for scientific research, climate modeling, forecasting, and marine operations planning.

SENSORS

Producing technologies ranging from portable sensors for identification of chemicals, automated biochemical analysis, and thermal neutron detection in aircraft; to the integration of acoustic sensors with “smart chutes” for biomass handling.

SOFTWARE

Providing open-source tools to translate between digital binary data and DNA’s nucleotide alphabet for archival data storage, and to customize data services supporting high performance computing, big data, and large-scale learning.

Visit our website www.lanl.gov/feynmancenter to explore the wide variety of technologies available.

www.lanl.gov/feynmancenter (505) 665-9090

Los Alamos National Laboratory is proud to be a part of the R&D 100 Innovation Network.

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ML-GA Argonne National Laboratory Argonne’s ML-GA software technology provides a unique artificial intelligence-driven optimization suite to shrink the industrial design cycle for product development across a variety of markets. The basic principle behind ML-GA is the coupling of machine learning (ML)-based fast-running surrogate models (in place of computationally expensive simulations) with a global optimization technique (in this case, a genetic algorithm (GA)).

This in-the-loop ML capability accelerates design iterations within the virtual optimization campaign by an order of magnitude compared to the current state-of-the-art approaches employing simulations directly coupled with the optimizer.

ML-GA exclusively uses an advanced ML algorithm, known as Super Learner, to generate surrogate models of target quantities of interest from simulation data. Within ML-GA, the ML surrogate models (once trained) are utilized to provide fast predictions of the performance of design candidates during each iteration of the GA.

ML-GA software encapsulates all the above features in an automated, self-contained, parallelizable, and portable Python workflow. This makes for integration with any simulation software for virtual design optimization purposes. In addition, ML-GA can be readily run on computing clusters, supercomputers and cloud-based platforms.

Precision Deicer

Traffic Flow Impact (TFI) Tool

Clinch River Computing Oak Ridge National Laboratory

MIT Lincoln Laboratory Federal Aviation Administration

The Precision Deicer uses light-detection and ranging data to gauge the amount of salt or brine needed per section of road, judged against a vulnerability index that accounts for such variables as slope and solar radiation. This technology conserves public resources, ensures driver safety and reduces environmental damage from runoff.

The Precision Deicer delivers a breakthrough approach to snow and ice mitigation by combining the physics of snowmelt with highresolution estimates of road vulnerability to help road crews determine the most effective amount of salt or brine to clear each roadway on a case-by-case basis and prioritize resources for the worst trouble spots.

The technology measures lidar data and balances such variables as slope and solar radiation against traffic data and weather forecasts to optimize road treatment, making roads safer for drivers in icy conditions, reducing closures of businesses and government offices and avoiding the environmental consequences of runoff from excess salt and brine.

Economic analysis suggests this innovation could save agencies as much as 20% of treatment costs.

The Traffic Flow Impact (TFI) Tool is a unique tool that provides air traffic control managers with a display of airspace capacity predictions and potentially achievable and sustainable traffic flow rates by using a revolutionary approach to integrate multiple weather forecasts. TFI uses a novel machine-learning technique to compute an airspace impact metric called permeability, which in simple terms is the overlap of measured storm features with an airspace resource to determine the amount of usable airspace. An established relationship between permeability and observed traffic flow rates is used to provide guidance to air traffic control managers on a potential set of traffic rates that are based upon the forecasted permeability. A machine learning approach is used to combine several deterministic and probabilistic convective weather forecast models to provide a predicted permeability and a range of potential permeability. TFI allows stakeholders to discuss appropriate Traffic Management Initiatives to efficiently handle airspace demand/capacity imbalances caused by adverse weather conditions.

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Misinformation join-fighting mechanism enabled by AI forensics technology

Global Synthetic Weather Radar

Institute for Information Industry Taiwan FactCheck Center

MIT Lincoln Laboratory U.S. Air Force

The deterrence of misinformation requires the establishment of public factchecking awareness; smooth reporting/ inquiry channels; professional factchecking agencies and a collaborative environment. Through AI technologies, the Institute for Information Industry tackled the requirements and integrated fact-checking related organizations so that a national-level joint-fighting system is formed, successfully preventing misinformation from spreading.

Through the cooperation of various fact-checking organizations in Taiwan, this system automatically collects suspected rumors from different channels, effectively improving the efficiency of the fact-checking process and forming a national-level joint-fighting system. In addition to providing the public with access to the fact checking results through popular apps, the system also provides international fact checking agencies, social platforms and search engine operators with APIs to connect the database so that the spread of misinformation, including that associated with Covid-19, can be quickly curbed to prevent national policies, social economy and people’s livelihood from being affected.

Secure-Firmware Over-the-Air (S-FOTA) Sandia National Laboratories S-FOTA uses an active authentication Digitally Unclonable Function (DUF) to consolidate, simplify and enhance the integrity and authenticity of firmware updates. It reduces the cost of deploying, managing, and securing the firmware by eliminating the complexity of existing services.

DUF technology is used to authenticate the firmware sender’s identity that is unique to the designated hardware containing a randomly generated static pattern (Random DUF Pattern - RDP), unknown and unknowable by anyone. A DUF engine/processor acts as a “black-box engine” that scrambles/modifies the input data with the unique RDP and then applies a one-way hash function to the data to prevent any chance of reverse engineering. This hashed value of scramble/modified data (DUF Signature) is sent to the authenticating vehicle, along with the original input data in clear text. The vehicle will reprocess the clear-text input data through its own identical DUF engine/processor. If the DUF Signature from the sending device matches the DUF Signature generated by the receiving vehicle, the authenticity and integrity of firmware is verified and checked.

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The Global Synthetic Weather Radar (GSWR) technology uses machine learning–based algorithms to provide radar-like weather imagery and radarforward forecasts in global regions where actual weather radars are not deployed or available. The GSWR capability builds on a previous limited-domain version, the Offshore Precipitation Capability (OPC). The OPC was developed for the Federal Aviation Administration to provide weather information for flight planning and air traffic control purposes for offshore regions off the U.S. east coast (OPC won an R&D 100 Award in 2016). GSWR required novel machine learning methods to incorporate new satellite, lightning, numerical weather model and radar truth data sources and to substantially scale up the capability from the continental United States domain to the global domain. This technology will provide valuable weather information to the U.S. Air Force to support mission planning for their worldwide operations, and it was deployed to their cloud computing environment in 2020. There are many civilian applications including aviation, water resources, and recreation that could also be enabled through wider GSWR deployment.

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Mochi: Customizable Data Navigation Tool Argonne National Laboratory Carnegie Mellon University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, The HDF Group Mochi is a game-changing open-source tool for rapid development of customized data services supporting high-performance computing (HPC), big data and large-scale learning across many scientific fields. The Mochi framework enables composition of distributed data services from a collection of connectable modules and subservices. These customized data services require relatively small amounts of new code, can generate high performance on HPC platforms, provide capable and productive interfaces and abstractions for various applications, and are readily adapted when new technologies are deployed.

Rather than forcing all applications to use a one-size-fits-all data staging and I/O software configuration, Mochi allows each application to use a data service specialized to its needs and access patterns. Already, Mochi is being incorporated to analyze data from particle accelerators, which has applications in fields such as medicine and materials science; study particle simulation data, with the goal of finding new sources of energy, such as nuclear fusion; help train machine learning models that can be used to identify cancer treatments; and build the data store for an upcoming exascale platform.

Slycat

WEC-Sim

Sandia National Laboratories

National Renewable Energy Laboratory Sandia National Laboratories

As simulation counts scale to many thousands, it becomes impossible for analysts to review all results individually.

Slycat enables understanding of an ensemble without requiring users to view each simulation’s results. This is analogous to using text analysis to understand content in a set of documents without needing to first read them all.

Slycat’s various models analyze different data types: multi-variate scalar data, temporal data, in situ generated multimedia including images, videos, pdfs and surface meshes. Different Slycat models complement each other, with results from one model informing exploration in another. The net result is rapid identification of ensemble characteristics, clusters, temporal trends, correlation between input parameters and outputs and similarity between ensemble members.

Abstract representations, interactive exploration and complex filtering allow analysts to focus on subsets of runs, enabling massive data sets to be rapidly evaluated. This reduced time to solution has proven itself useful in support of Sandia’s nuclear deterrence work. Because of its extensible framework, Slycat has been used in other mission areas: parts acceptance, evaluating test results and neuromorphic architectural comparisons.

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Wave Energy Converter Simulator (WEC-Sim) is the first opensource code allowing developers to simulate WEC dynamics and performance, which lowers costs and reduces R&D cycle time in this pivotal and growing field.

Wave energy can transform the way we power homes and businesses, lending resilience to electric grids. It’s also a potential energy source for ocean observation platforms, marine vessels and desalination to produce clean drinking water.

Wave energy devices face highly variable and sometimes treacherous conditions, making their development extremely challenging and risky. There is no single tried-and-true design for harvesting the vast potential energy of the world’s waters — but there is a wealth of promising ideas, all of which need to be validated and refined.

Before WEC-Sim, no open-source, customizable software existed for wave energy developers who wanted to better understand their creations before submitting them to expensive and difficult trials in wave tanks or open water. WEC-Sim dramatically reduces the uncertainty around how WECs will perform in realworld marine environments, accelerating WEC development and lowering costs.

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MSC MillMax Oak Ridge National Laboratory MSC Industrial Supply, Manufacturing Laboratories MSC MillMax uses impact testing equipment and software to improve the milling performance on Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine tools.

The measurement and user interface allow programmers and machine operators to predetermine the tool-specific ideal cutting conditions for milling. Optimal milling conditions are determined by measurement rather than trial and error.

The results so far have been impressive. In the first six months of deployment, MSC MillMax has delivered an average of 200% increase in material removal rate (MRR) for existing processes.

This leap in performance and productivity has resulted in cycle time reductions of 40% on average. Reduced cycle time, reduced trial and error, reduced scrapped parts all lead to lower costs and greater competitiveness. The time gained by manufacturing parts faster creates open capacity that allows for revenue growth.

Finally, the ability to make more parts, more competitively, and in a shorter time span enables businesses to withstand the perils of the manufacturing skills gap.

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INER Distribution Network Management System (iDNMS) Institute of Nuclear Energy Research, Atomic Energy Council, Executive Yuan (INER) INER Distribution Network Management System (iDNMS) is the integration of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system with the Geographic Information System (GIS) and a distribution power flow program, which can visualize real-time feeder operating status geospatially on maps and provide intelligent load transfer solutions based on power flow calculation when a fault occurs.

GIS can also show the direction of the electricity supply when the current is inversely conveyed due to the increase of the power generation of the renewable energy devices. Accordingly, dispatchers can know the electricity supply sources of different parts of a feeder and effectively manage the renewable energy devices, so that the system can be more convenient to use.

The SCADA system provides the intelligent load transfer function and is integrated with the AHP, which serves as the basis of weighting factors, which dispatchers can manually adjust.

Finally, the real-time information from SCADA can be captured by GIS, and various dynamic information of the distribution network can be displayed on the map via the data visualization technology.

ThermalTracker-3D Pacific Northwest National Laboratory ThermalTracker-3D is the only known avian tracking system equipped with 3D tracking capability via thermal cameras, providing the most comprehensive information needed for planned offshore wind farms to determine if birds and bats are flying at heights where they are at risk of turbine blade collision. The 3D capability captures detailed information about wingspan, body length, flight speed and height — critical data historically difficult to obtain but necessary for understanding responses of offshore birds and bats to wind turbines. This data would accurately characterize the environmental impacts of offshore wind development.

Unlike competing technologies, ThermalTracker-3D can detect a wide range of birds and bats, from small to large, both night and day, providing 3D georeferenced flight tracks for quantifying animal activity in proposed development areas.

ThermalTracker-3D is made up of a stereo pair of thermal cameras, software, a global positioning system (GPS) and camera orientation sensors. The system is used with any high-performing industrial computer system with power over ethernet ports.

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Software-defined Augmented Robot Joint (SARJ) Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) Software-defined Augmented Robot Joint (SARJ), the software enhanced robot joint as an effective building block for versatile mechatronic applications, enables modular robot arms, autonomous mobile robots and many other potential motion-actuation applications to be developed easier.

Moreover, SARJ equipped with a powerful digital twin platform takes care of every aspect of the application-oriented robot formulation.

This enhanced development environment enables various industrial applications among modular robot arms, autonomous robots and other developing convenient motion-actuation applications. The customized development process is realized for a sophisticated multiaxis electromechanical system. In addition, customers reported, the robot developed by the SARJ’s software development platform will be able to not only reduce programming development time from a week to a day - average half day, but also take care of every applicationoriented robot formulation with no programming experience.

With respect to the pre-set lower flexibility, industrial-integrated actuator, SARJ technology is undoubtedly a highly competitive option in tomorrow’s fully digital control world.

Terra Spotlight: A New Paradigm in Rapid Change Detection Using Satellite Images Los Alamos National Laboratory LANL has a rich history of designing and deploying space systems.

Over 30% of all U.S. space systems have the Laboratory’s fingerprint on them. Terra Spotlight ensures that the Laboratory’s history of scientific excellence in space will continue. Terra Spotlight opens exciting frontiers in remote sensing and our understanding of changes to the Earth’s surface, with implications for national security, environmental science and more. Terra Spotlight, which employs a novel algorithmic approach, provides a crucial step in achieving the capability to monitor portions of the Earth’s surface for unexpected activities and changes.

The growth in space-based remote sensing enables more complex analyses to deliver informed actionable intelligence. With the everincreasing deluge of satellite data, the development of automated cueing and detection algorithms that tell us “where to look” is paramount.

This capability — persistent geospatial intelligence — is of great interest to the Laboratory’s national security partners and commercial companies using remote sensing data for agriculture, emergency preparedness, climate change and more. Terra Spotlight is a new paradigm in rapid change detection, a novel capability for America’s national security.

Shared Information Platform for Disaster Management Hitachi National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience Hitachi and National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience (NIED) developed Shared Information Platform for Disaster Management (SIP4D), a system that shares disaster information across administrative boundaries. This product aggregates data by mediating between the systems operated by each organization and processes them into beneficial information for disaster response in a timely manner. This improves the efficiency of disaster response.

In Japan, municipalities and national governmental agencies used to build their own information systems for disaster response which were mainly focused on information sharing within each organization. These data formats were individually defined and inconsistent, leading to organizations being unable to share their field data with other organizations (such as the road conditions at an area that suffered a disaster).

SIP4D connects every organization’s independent system through its common API, combining obtained data in various formats in a semantic way, integrating this data with advanced functions at the central hub, providing missing data.

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MURMUR (Motion Under Rubble Measured Using Radar) MIT Lincoln Laboratory United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) The Rapid Reaction Technology Office (OSD RRTO) Motion Under Rubble Measured Using Radar (MURMUR) is a lightweight, portable life-detection radar designed for humanitarian aid and disaster relief (HADR) that rapidly detects, ranges and characterizes survivors in the complex HADR conditions of rubble and degraded infrastructure.

Unlike many of its competitors, MURMUR makes detections in real time and operates at a larger standoff distance.

MURMUR can see through a wide range of materials, which is key for being able to respond to multiple types of disasters. It can operate up to 10 meters away from the nearest obstacle it is trying to see through and detect multiple humans up to 30 meters away, enabling it to perform in the varied and unpredictable environments that disasters provide. With lives at stake, time is of the essence. MURMUR can deliver data to operators wirelessly and in real time, providing rescue teams with the situational awareness they need to do what they do best.

The Neutron and Gamma Ray Source Localization and Mapping Platform 2.0 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory The Neutron and Gamma Localization and Mapping Platform (NG-LAMP) is the first ever portable system for simultaneous imaging and mapping of gamma ray and neutron radioactivity in three-dimensions (3D) and in real-time. Unlike all other portable, commercially available radiation imaging systems, which image and map radiation signatures in only one or two dimensions, NG-LAMP creates 3D reconstructions of both the environment surrounding the detector and radioactivity.

This allows users to visualize and quantify the distribution of radiation signatures with contextual information about the measurement environment. Moreover, these capabilities are integrated into a compact, lightweight platform designed for hand-portable operations and operations on unmanned aerial and ground vehicles. The device addresses multiple nuclear security, nuclear safeguards and nuclear decontamination and remediation needs. The size and weight of NGLAMP permits efficient deployment to U.S. military, international inspectors, and law enforcement personnel conducting search and interdiction operations in support of countering nuclear threats and mitigating human exposure to radioactivity.

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UVL Robotics: drone solution for warehouse inventory counts UVL Robotics UVL Robotics’ drone inventory is a disruptive technology that is a game-changer for future logistics. The company is a leading provider of drone-based technologies for the industry. Starting from 2019, UVL Robotics has successfully conducted more than 50 inventories for major FMCG, 3PL and retail companies and shaped a new market for industrial robots that bring real value to the business.

Drone inventory is a technology that provides customers with accurate, fast and safe stock management.

UVL Robotics uses self-produced unmanned drones capable of flying inside a warehouse. Drones have highprecision scanners, optical rangefinders and HD cameras and can scan both QRs and barcodes & RFID at any height. The data received from drones get uploaded to the ground station and then integrated through special software with the WMS system of the warehouse. The client can monitor the progress of inventory in realtime through monitors, as well as receive photos of the products to check the integrity of pallets.

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QED: Quantum Ensured Defense of the Smart Electric Grid Los Alamos National Laboratory Oak Ridge National Laboratory and EPB Quantum-Ensured Defense of the Smart Electric Grid (QED) is a new approach for electric grid security using quantum information.

This technique, based on cutting-edge quantum science and network security, uses quantum communications to authenticate and encrypt power grid control signals, protecting it from any third-party infiltration.

By placing the root of America’s electric grid security on fundamental physical laws, rather than mathematical complexity, these quantum-enabled systems offer an alternative path to secure communication across the national electric grid. Using the laws of

Plug-N-Play Appliance for Resilient Response of Operational Technologies (PARROT)

physics, the information is protected because a photon cannot be cut in half, accurately copied, or measured without changing it in some way. QED has demonstrated its interoperability with existing SCADA systems, which enables independent electric providers the ability to incorporate it into their system’s infrastructure without the need for a complete system overhaul. By developing game-changing cybersecurity tools that anticipate future attack scenarios (particularly adversarial development of quantum computing), and by making future systems able to automatically detect, mitigate and survive malicious action, we can keep the lights on for generations to come.

SZ: A Lossy Compression Framework for Scientific Data Argonne National Laboratory

Idaho National Laboratory The Plug-N-Play Appliance for Resilient Response of Operational Technologies (PARROT) provides an extra layer of security from cyberattacks on critical infrastructure operations. When placed between control systems and infrastructure, PARROT isolates a cyberattack, provides a manual or automated response, and prevents harmful impacts while maintaining operations.

Most critical infrastructure in the U.S. is protected by perimeter security that, once bypassed, leaves operational technologies like generators, turbines and boilers vulnerable to cyberattacks. These types of attacks on industrial control systems are increasingly common.

PARROT gives operators of legacy systems and devices the ability to upgrade security without replacing older yet still-functional legacy equipment. PARROT further allows operators to target the protection of especially vulnerable or valuable equipment or systems. PARROT’s flexibility also allows operators to protect disbursed equipment such as wind turbines that may be difficult to secure against a physical attack.

In the future, industry vendors would integrate PARROT into field control device/ operational technology designs.

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The SZ compression framework is a software solution to reduce scientific datasets while keeping critical information for scientific analysis and discovery. Compared to all competitive products, SZ is applicable to a wider range of use-cases and applications and demonstrates better performance in compression ratios, speed and accuracy in most cases.

Scientific data reduction is a critical problem that must be addressed for the success of exascale supercomputers and next-generation facilitysize scientific instruments at a time when they are urgently needed to address important societal problems like climate change, water management, advanced manufacturing and the development of new vaccines and drugs. The SZ compression framework for scientific data demonstrates the widest scope of use-cases and offers the best performance for more applications in compression ratios, speed and accuracy compared to competitive products. SZ is applicable to a large spectrum of scientific simulations and instrument facilities. For example, SZ compresses twice more seismic imaging data for oil and gas than the second-best compressor for the same accuracy. SZ addresses effectively the severe data streaming reduction challenge raised by crystallography in the Linac Coherent Light Source, for example, while keeping critical science details. For quantum chemistry, SZ accelerates the execution by up to 50%. No other lossy compressor offers this diversity of applicability and this consistency in performance.

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SPECIAL RECOGNITION: BATTLING COVID-19 SPECIAL RECOGNITION FINALIST

GOLD: EpiCast: Simulating Disease Epidemics with Extreme Detail Los Alamos National Laboratory EpiCast is modeling software that generates a synthetic, representative population to simulate infectious disease transmission in the U.S. with extreme detail and granularity. The software models human behavior combined with community-specific information to provide a fine-grained preview of the effect of potential mitigation strategies for decision makers.

For decades, researchers used carefully calculated averages to model infectious disease spread. The models’ shortcomings became apparent in March 2020 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Policymakers needed a better way to understand and predict an uncertain and deadly future while gauging the efficacy of every intervention strategy at their disposal.

The EpiCast disease simulation tool addresses this critical need, empowering policy makers to predict the impacts of an enormous range of variables and mitigation methods, including school and industry-specific closures, social distancing compliance, mask wearing, and vaccinations. No other model evaluates the workforce population by industry classification, enabling priority vaccine distribution to healthcare workers, first responders, and other essential workers. EpiCast stands alone in its unprecedented granularity and fidelity, providing essential information to support public health policy.

SILVER: Domestic supply chain of filter media and face masks Oak Ridge National Laboratory Techmer PM, DemeTECH ORNL developed the technology for producing filter media in response to the mask shortage imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The technology was scaled at Cummins Filtration to produce enough filter media to supply DemeTECH’s production of face masks that filter more than 98% of all airborne virus particles and bacteria.

During a time of national crisis, one DOE National laboratory (ORNL) and three US manufacturers (DemeTECH, Cummins Filtration and TechmerPM) collaborated on identifying a domestic supply chain of polypropylene and additive material; developing a new charging system for use in industrial environments to produce N95 melt-blown material; modifying existing filtration production lines at Cummins Filtration to manufacture N95 melt-blown fabric; fully characterizing the material and masks for performance; establishing an N95 production facility, and achieving NIOSH and FDA approval to secure a domestic supply of N95 respirators in less than 6 months.

The team engaged with Dr. Peter Tsai, inventor of the N95 technology, to modify the process, design a new charging system and deploy to industry in record time.

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BRONZE: PerkinElmer New Coronavirus Nucleic Acid Detection Kit PerkinElmer The PerkinElmer New Coronavirus Nucleic Acid Detection Kit is a RTPCR test for the qualitative detection of Covid-19. It is the most sensitive commercially available kit and is one of just four RT-PCR kits authorized for sample pooling and screening of asymptomatic individuals.

Since the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, PerkinElmer employees have worked collaboratively across continents to bring SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic solutions to market. Foremost among them is the PerkinElmer New Coronavirus Nucleic Acid Detection kit – a RT-PCR test kit that was developed in a two-week timeframe by PerkinElmer employees in Taicang, China, working around-theclock. After its initial Emergency Use Authorization in March 2020, this kit received subsequent authorizations for sample pooling and asymptomatic testing in part because of its superior sensitivity. For this reason, other SARS-CoV-2 testing solutions are benchmarked against this kit, such as the PerkinElmer COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test.

Since this kit’s introduction, PerkinElmer has supported more than 1,000 new diagnostics customers globally who in total have used more than 25 million PCR tests to stop the spread of COVID-19.

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SPECIAL RECOGNITION: CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY SPECIAL RECOGNITION FINALIST

GOLD: CICE Consortium Los Alamos National Laboratory, Danish Meteorological Institute, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences, National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Naval Postgraduate School, U. S. Naval Research Laboratory Stennis Space Center, University of Reading, University of Washington CICE is a computational model that represents changes to sea ice and its interactions with the polar environment and ecosystems. CICE and its support infrastructure are the global standard for sea ice modeling across scales for multiple applications, including scientific research, climate modeling, forecasting and operations planning.

CICE has led the way in sea ice model innovation since its inception. Because of its versatile design and open-source framework, CICE’s technology underpins most sea ice models available today. Recent innovations such as landfast ice and Icepack’s unique modularity, hydrology, ecosystem and floe size distribution allow for more extensive, precise predictions of sea ice and the impact it has on local and global environments.

The CICE Consortium provides a robust, comprehensive, well documented model framework for testing R&D innovations and sharing them broadly, resulting in CICE being the world’s most trusted sea ice model.

SILVER: RAPTR N95 Sandia National Laboratories The RAPTR N95, from Sandia National Laboratories, is a reusable respirator intended for medical applications designed for rapid producibility using standard injection molding processes. The unique structure of this respirator permits the components to be disassembled for sterilization, decontamination and replacement. This respirator employs a passive resonator to transmit the wearer’s voice and can be replaced with a port for fit certification. During fit certification an evaluator verifies the mask does not open while the person wearing the mask performs a series of actions.

The respirator body is composed of a soft structure intended for prolonged use and comfort. Air is filtered during both inhalation and exhalation. N95 filter media selection is at the discretion of the user, improving supply chain dependency and eliminating dependence on single source N95 filter media seen in half mask respirators today.

Unlike popular half-mask respirators, the filter media is held in a protected structure to prevent contamination/damage from biological or chemical hazards.

The RAPTR N95’s performance has been verified by quantitative fit testing on multiple wearers, using OSHArequired fit testing procedures.

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BRONZE: Misinformation joinfighting mechanism enabled

by AI forensics technology Institute for Information Industry Taiwan FactCheck Center The deterrence of misinformation requires the establishment of public factchecking awareness; smooth reporting/ inquiry channels; professional factchecking agencies and a collaborative environment. Through AI technologies, the Institute for Information Industry tackled the requirements and integrated fact-checking related organizations so that a national-level joint-fighting system is formed, successfully preventing misinformation from spreading.

Through the cooperation of various fact-checking organizations in Taiwan, this system automatically collects suspected rumors from different channels, effectively improving the efficiency of the fact-checking process and forming a national-level joint-fighting system. In addition to providing the public with access to the fact checking results through popular apps, the system also provides international fact checking agencies, social platforms and search engine operators with APIs to connect the database so that the spread of misinformation, including that associated with Covid-19, can be quickly curbed to prevent national policies, social economy and people’s livelihood from being affected.

R&D WORLD | DECEMBER 2021

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SPECIAL RECOGNITION: GREEN TECH SPECIAL RECOGNITION FINALIST

GOLD: Environmentally Benign Extraction (EBE) of Critical Metals using Supercritical CO2-Based Solvent Sandia National Laboratories Sandia’s Environmentally Benign Extraction (EBE) method reduces mining costs and environmental impact. The economic value of this technology is about two times the traditional technologies and conventional sources. Environmentally, the EBE’s innovative technique using citrate as the reagent generates no new waste and makes the original coal ash

cleaner. This technology has other applications, such as treating water produced from shale fracking, as a coal cleanser for removing toxic metals and sulfur, and to extract transition metals from metalliferous shales. Trivalent actinides have the same chemical behaviors as REEs, therefore, this technology could also extract trivalent actinides from nuclear waste before their further separation. DOE funded a $1.5 million project led by New Mexico Tech (NMT), and Sandia is working with NMT and industry partners to apply the EBE technology in New Mexico as part of the resource assessment effort.

Commercial company, D.J. Ferguson & Associates, is also very interested in this technology and is working with Sandia to develop this technology for gallium extraction from coal ash for water treatment applications.

SILVER: Infinitum Electric Air-Core Motor

BRONZE: AirJoule SelfRegenerating Dehumidifier

Infinitum Electric

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Infinitum Electric’s Air-Core Motors use lightweight materials and modular design to generate the same power in half the size and weight, at a fraction of the carbon footprint of conventional motors. Infinitum Electric motors offer a fully integrated system: motor, variable frequency drive (VFD) and embedded IoT in a single compact package.

Infinitum Electric developed an axial flux air core permanent magnet electric motor that is lighter, quieter and more efficient than conventional electric motors with the same power rating. Infinitum Electric’s motors are already being introduced in commercial HVAC systems, pumps, consumer appliances and hybrid electric vehicles, but the company’s vision is to make the IE motor the heart of every machine in the world - from vacuum cleaners to electric vehicles and electric airplanes.

IE’s R&D reimagined motors were built around the needs of humankind for the next century with sustainability, noise reduction and ease-of-use in mind.

The AirJoule incorporates a radically different approach to dehumidification that dramatically reduces the energy costs associated with HVAC systems.

Removing excess moisture allows HVAC units to work more efficiently while improving human comfort, cutting power bills and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The need for AirJoule technology increased with the arrival of the pandemic. Tighter buildings were the trend to reduce HVAC energy consumption — until COVID-19 arrived. Now, HVAC systems need to increase ventilation to reduce viral loads. Bringing in more warm, humid outside air will greatly increase loads on HVAC systems.

AirJoule can drastically cut the resulting higher HVAC energy costs while still providing improved indoor air quality from increased ventilation.

AirJoule is also the first dehumidification system designed to service the transportation market, especially electric vehicles. More efficient cooling will increase driving range by up to 75%, requiring fewer recharges from the grid. By servicing the combined global transportation and residential/commercial buildings markets, AirJoule brings unprecedented energy savings and carbon dioxide emissions reduction potential to the world.

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SPECIAL RECOGNITION: MARKET DISRUPTOR - PRODUCTS SPECIAL RECOGNITION FINALIST

GOLD: Peak Nano Optics Peak Nano Optics Peak Nano Optics produces Layered Gradient Refractive Index (LGRIN) lenses for a multitude of applications in military and commercial markets. The patented process builds polymeric lenses comprised of over 1.2 million nanolayers that are laminated from custom refractive index films. This creates a customizable refractive index profile using a “library” of films.

The film library is consolidated into a sheet then diamond turned to create a finished lens. Each final lens provides unprecedented color correction, reduced size/weight and increased focusing power. The technology can produce a wider variety of optics, including spherical, aspherical or freeform with customizable diameters from 3-100 mm.

The wider variety provides designers with more degrees of freedom in product design to create new sizes, shapes and performance. This performance will benefit commercial binoculars and spotting scopes and will increase the safety of soldiers in the field.

Peak Nano Optics has captured the imagination of optical designers who are embracing the proposition of having lenses that provide significantly wider field of view, better resolution, and reduced overall weight.

SILVER: Earth’s-field Resonance Detection and Evaluation (ERDE) Devices

BRONZE: Lab-on-a-Fish Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory NMR spectroscopy is a powerful analytical technique to determine chemical structure, but the technology lags other forms of spectroscopy with respect to size, weight, cost and portability.

Conventional high-field NMR employs large superconducting magnets that require liquid cryogens. Conversely, permanent magnet-based benchtop spectrometers could be portable but are heavy and suffer from resolution issues based on large line broadening intrinsic to magnetic field limitations. There is a strict tradeoff between portability and resolution in NMR systems.

To bridge these issues, the Los Alamos team created ERDE, a class of portable NMR spectrometers that leverage Earth’s magnetic field. By using Earth’s magnetic field, instrumentation demands are minimized and unique high-resolution (<0.1 Hz) spectra are observable. ERDE offers portable structure determination of molecules with no background interference in a matter of seconds. ERDE revolutionizes fieldable NMR analysis with far-reaching applications for the fields of environmental sensing, through-pipe sensing, catalysis, chemical analysis, toxic chemical detection and more.

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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Lab-on-a-Fish is a wireless, miniaturized underwater technology system that provides real-time monitoring of fish and small aquatic species in marine, freshwater and estuarine habitats. The PNNL technology is the first in the world to combine edge computing with wireless acoustic sensing to assess animal behavior (acceleration and gyration); physiology (electrocardiogram and electromyogram); and environment (temperature, pressure, and magnetic sensor). Lab-on-a-Fish allows correlations to be made about the behavior, physiology and environmental parameters of tagged animals to study underlying biological processes. By using a wide array of sensors, ecologists can study small species for longer durations — something that has not been possible with other technologies.

The technology is already being modified and leveraged for use with other animals, including birds and bats, to mitigate wildlife interactions with wind turbines. In the future, Lab-on-a-Fish could be used as a proofing ground for human health monitoring, which could open new, preventive and diagnostic care for humans.

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SPECIAL RECOGNITION: MARKET DISRUPTOR - SERVICES SPECIAL RECOGNITION FINALIST

GOLD: Electrically-Assisted Free Forming (EAFF) Technology – Digital Dieless Direct Manufacturing Technology for Mass Customization of Sheet Metals Hong Kong Productivity Council Tung Hing Automation Investment The sheet metal processing industry is now subject to game-changing forces driven by the ElectricallyAssisted Free Forming (EAFF) Technology due to its mass customization capability. Thanks to the “Virtualization” technology and “Digital Twin”, the product realization and process optimization process can be done virtually which significantly reduces the process setup time, production ramp-up time and material waste in sheet metal processing, making small-batch customized sheet metal processing economically justified. Moreover, the reduction in time consumed can greatly improve the situation of low machine utilization in sheet metal processing, which is always a pain point to the industry. Furthermore, the adoption of incremental forming technology using robotic arms allows the design and production of more complex designs while the adoption of electro-plasticity theory enhances the formability of the sheet metal. Synergized with the virtualization technology, a lot of previously impossible lightweight design and unique aesthetic features can be realized now simply from a CAD file. With EAFF, sheet metal processing can step into a new era of mass customization of strong and durable sheet metals with complex 3D geometry.

SILVER: Terra Spotlight: A New Paradigm in Rapid Change Detection Using Satellite Images Los Alamos National Laboratory For the first time ever, Los Alamos National Laboratory-developed Terra Spotlight’s approach identifies changes in satellite-based imagery collected from multiple independent imaging systems.

Using a rigorous mathematical framework, Terra Spotlight implicitly aligns the disparate sensing systems, allowing for multi-satellite, multi-physics data fusion and enabling rapid discovery of important changes on the Earth’s surface.

Terra Spotlight opens exciting frontiers in remote sensing and our understanding of changes to the Earth’s surface, with implications for national security, environmental science and more. The growth in space-based remote sensing enables more complex analyses to deliver informed actionable intelligence. With the everincreasing deluge of satellite data, the development of automated cueing and detection algorithms that tell us “where to look” is paramount. This capability — persistent geospatial intelligence — is of great interest to the Laboratory’s national security partners and commercial companies using remote sensing data for agriculture, emergency preparedness, climate change and more. Terra Spotlight is a new paradigm in rapid change detection, a novel capability for America’s national security.

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BRONZE: SmartTensors AI Platform Los Alamos National Laboratory The SmartTensors AI Platform, from Los Alamos National Laboratory, is a scalable, unsupervised machine learning software suite capable of identifying and extracting essential hidden features and efficiently compressing information in massive datasets. SmartTensors autonomously analyzes and discovers hidden features, signatures and patterns otherwise undetectable and buried in tens of terabytes of data.

The platform performs unsupervised machine learning on a large scale. The unsupervised, parallel algorithms do not require human-guided training to make predictions and decisions. They are self-taught and extract patterns from data. This flexible tool can make predictions based on gained knowledge. Unique SmartTensors’ capabilities include latent feature extraction, dimension reduction, pattern recognition, anomaly detection, data compression and text mining. SmartTensors has been applied effectively and impactfully to medicine, disease spread analysis/ prediction, energy extraction, carbon sequestration, climate change, economic analysis, infrastructure stability, and national security.

SmartTensors can be used on laptops, desktops, supercomputers and cloud platforms.

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Pittcon is a catalyst of scientific advancement for you, your research, your career, your organization, and together, our world. Our aim is to provide you with unparalleled access to the latest advances in laboratory science, to the instrumentation enhancing your work, and to an international assembly of scientists experimenting, discovering, and innovating within areas of focus that include:

Bioanalytics & Life Sciences

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Chemical Materials & Materials Science

Cosmetics & Personal Care

Energy

Environmental

Food Science & Agriculture

Forensics & Toxicology

Industry & Manufacturing

Pharmaceutical

Your opportunity to access a world of collaborative science starts at pittcon.org.

Atlanta, GA, USA | March 5-9, 2022

• 2019 •

2021

FINALISTS FINALIST FINALISTS

ANALYTICAL/TEST

Celluwarm, Nano and Advanced Materials Institute

Peak Nano Optics, Peak Nano Optics

housings enabling EV mass production and offering safe battery

Fast PFAS Sensor, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

BETAMATE 2090 crash resistant structural adhesive for battery

MSA-650 IRIS Micro System Analyzer, Polytec GmbH

modules, DuPont

IT/TECHNICAL

PROCESS/PROTOTYPING

Research Center (GRC)

HP 3D High Reusability PP, HP Inc.

Small Spacecraft Electric Propulsion (SSEP) System, NASA Glenn Lightweight Optical Telecommunication from Under Sea (LOTUS), MIT Lincoln Laboratory Wireless Valve Position Indicator Sensor System, Idaho National Laboratory

In-Sight 3D-L4000, Cognex Corp.

HP Jet Fusion 5200 Series: 3D Automatic Unpacking Station, HP Inc. Electric Autonomous Box Truck, Gatik

Stamping-Type Plating Machine, Toyota Motor Corp.

A Novel Circulating Bed Biofilm Reactor (CBBR) for Carbon Capture

ePix X-ray detectors, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

from Sewage, Hong Kong Productivity Council

MECHANICAL/MATERIALS

Dieless Direct Manufacturing Technology for Mass Customization of

Solar Forward Osmosis (FO) Desalination System, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory AGILITY 1500 Performance LDPE, Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics, a business unit of Dow INFINAIR Polyolefin Elastomers, Dow Specialty Plastics Carbon CACHE (Ceramic Anode Cell with High Efficiency), Idaho National Laboratory

Electrically-Assisted Free Forming (EAFF) Technology – Digital Sheet Metals, Hong Kong Productivity Council

Bio-nano cellulose composite technology through aqueous-phase functionalization, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Win-3D Washout-Coating, Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Upcycling of Electronic Waste into Gold Nanoparticles Using Ultrasound, Sandia National Laboratories

RHOBARR 214 Emulsion, The Dow Chemical Co.

SOFTWARE/SERVICES

Borchi OXY-Coat 1510, Milliken & Company

AiWT-DMP, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI)

Auxiliaries (BioDA), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI)

(SMPPQSS), Metal Industries Research & Development Centre (MIRDC)

Thermoset EVA Material, EDPV-2TE, Industrial Technology Research

Automation Equipment (RSMS), Institute for Information Industry

Liquid Nails Fuze*It Max, PPG

IdPrism, MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Create to Zero — Future Eco Textiles with Bio-Dyes and Bio-

Smart Multifunctional Periodontal Pathology Quick Screening System

Easy-Dismantled PV Modules with Thermoplastic Elastomer and

Resilience Smart Maintenance System for Semiconductor

Institute (ITRI)

SNAPSHOT: Distributed Accelerated All-Pairs Shortest Path, Oak

Hybrid Power Fuel Cell System with High Payload and Duration for

Ridge National Laboratory

Smart Motoring-Gear Module, Electric Motor Technology Research

Inspector, Sandia National Laboratories

UAV (HPFC-HPD), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI)

talos.DPI: Transparent Application-Layer/OS Deeper Packet

Center, National Cheng Kung University Smart-bomb for Neutralizing Underground TCE Pollution (S-NUT), Industry Technology Research Institution (ITRI) Ultrawhite Radiative Cooling Paint, Purdue University aquatimo, Taiwan Textile Research Institute High-Temperature Printable (HTP) Aluminum Alloys, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Integrated Chutes and Sensors: Making Biorefineries Commercially Viable, Los Alamos National Laboratory

DOWSIL 8016 Waterborne Resin, Dow

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WINNER INDEX FINALIST WINNERS

3D Printing Biomimetic Materials and Structures for Tissue Integration (BioMS-Ti)................................................................................. 8 A high-performance chromium-antimony absorber material for next-generation lithography photomasks............................................................. 22 ADS Codex: Adaptive DNA Storage Codec......................................................... 36 AeroMINE.............................................................................................................. 23 AgriTraxx AirCore Gauge Tires.............................................................................. 22 AI-Rad Companion Organs RT.............................................................................. 36 AirJoule Self-Regenerating Dehumidifier.............................................................. 52 AMSil and AMSil Silbione...................................................................................... 23 Aquadex SmartFlow.............................................................................................. 8 Autonomous Self-Healing Sealant......................................................................... 25 Ballistic Gas Chromatograph (BGC)...................................................................... 8 BIG NET................................................................................................................ 22 Bigfoot Spectral Cell Sorter................................................................................... 9 Bison...................................................................................................................... 36 BLK247 from Leica Geosystems, part of Hexagon................................................ 37 Catalyzed Diesel Exhaust Fluid (CAT-DEF)............................................................ 28 Certara’s COVID-19 Vaccine Model...................................................................... 37 CICE Consortium................................................................................................... 38,51 Cloud-based Smart Point Cloud Processing (CSPCP)........................................... 16 Coffee Bean Grinding Blade with Hard Amorphous Metal Coating..................... 26 Commercial Routing Assistance Tool.................................................................... 37 Delrin RA511CPE................................................................................................... 25 dGen...................................................................................................................... 39 Domestic supply chain of filter media and face masks......................................... 50 DOWSIL TC-4060 Thermal Gel............................................................................. 27 E-NANO FTHR-001 Resin...................................................................................... 26 Earth’s-field Resonance Detection and Evaluation (ERDE) Devices...................... 31, 53 Eco-Mobility with Connected Powertrains............................................................ 39 ELCRES HTV150 Dielectric Film............................................................................ 28 Electrically-Assisted Free Forming (EAFF) Technology – Digital Dieless Direct Manufacturing Technology for Mass Customization of Sheet Metals.............. 54 Environmentally Benign Extraction (EBE) of Critical Metals using Supercritical CO2-Based Solvent................................................................. 52 EpiCast: Simulating Disease Epidemics with Extreme Detail................................ 50 Field-Programmable Imaging Array...................................................................... 16 Floodlight Non-Targeted Analysis System............................................................ 39 Flux: Next-Generation Workload Management Software Framework.................. 38 Forager.................................................................................................................. 10 Free-space quantum network link architecture..................................................... 18 Gibco CTS Rotea Counterflow Centrifugation System.......................................... 9 Global Synthetic Weather Radar........................................................................... 43 GridDamper.......................................................................................................... 21 GRSR..................................................................................................................... 27 Guardiant............................................................................................................... 31 GUIDE (Guided Ultrasound Intervention Device).................................................. 13 HSG Thermal Management Pad........................................................................... 30 INER Distribution Network Management System (iDNMS)................................... 45 Infinitum Electric Air-Core Motor........................................................................... 19, 52 IS-P4 Separator-free Lithium-ion Battery............................................................... 29 kNOw Touch.......................................................................................................... 19 Lab-on-a-Fish......................................................................................................... 18, 53 Layered-Rocksalt Intergrowth Electrode Materials for Next-Generation Li-ion Batteries........................................................................... 34 Low Voltage Air Circuit Breakers World Super AE V Series C-class...................... 20 Microhydraulic Motors........................................................................................... 26 Misinformation join-fighting mechanism enabled

by AI forensics technology.................................................................................... 43, 51 ML-GA................................................................................................................... 42

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Mochi: Customizable Data Navigation Tool.......................................................... 44 Model 261 Deep Ultraviolet Diode Laser Module................................................ 11 Monolithic Fiber Array Launcher........................................................................... 20 MSC MillMax......................................................................................................... 45 Multi-functional Sorbent Technology (MUST)........................................................ 33 Multiplicity Counter for Thermal and Fast Neutrons (MC-TF)............................... 16 MURMUR (Motion Under Rubble Measured Using Radar).................................... 47 Nalu micro-implantable pulse generator (mIPG)................................................... 18 NexION 5000 Multi-Quadrupole ICP Mass Spectrometer.................................... 10 Nortis ParVivo Platform......................................................................................... 11 OH0TA OVMed Medical Image Sensor................................................................ 9 Optical Transconductance Varistor........................................................................ 17 Peak Nano Optics.................................................................................................. 53 PerkinElmer New Coronavirus Nucleic Acid Detection Kit.................................... 50 PhotoCube............................................................................................................ 12 Plug-N-Play Appliance for Resilient Response of Operational Technologies (PARROT)..................................................................... 48 Portable EnGineered Analytic Sensor with a Utomated Sampling (PEGASUS)............................................................................ 30 Potent and Effective Synthetic SARS-CoV-2 Neutralizing Nanobodies................. 13 PPG BFP-SE Battery Fire Protection...................................................................... 29 PPG ENVIROCRON Extreme Protection Thermally Conductive Dielectric Powder Coatings............................................... 32 PPG HI-TEMP 1027 HD......................................................................................... 27 Precision Deicer..................................................................................................... 42 QED: Quantum Ensured Defense of the Smart Electric Grid................................ 48 Quantum Scientific Computing Open User Testbed (QSCOUT)........................... 19 RAPTR N95............................................................................................................ 11,51 RE-Metal................................................................................................................ 25 RFID Yarn: Overcomer for 5 Major Durability Test................................................ 34 SABIC’s High-Purity SD1100P Specialty Dianhydride............................................ 29 Secure-Firmware Over-the-Air (S-FOTA)............................................................... 43 Shadow Figment................................................................................................... 38 Shared Information Platform for Disaster Management........................................ 46 SIRIUS XHS............................................................................................................ 10 Slycat..................................................................................................................... 44 Small World AI....................................................................................................... 20 SmartTensors AI Platform...................................................................................... 17, 54 Software-defined Augmented Robot Joint (SARJ)................................................ 46 Solvite Garment Rejuvenator................................................................................ 23 Spectrally Efficient Digital Logic............................................................................ 17 SZ: A Lossy Compression Framework for Scientific Data...................................... 48 Terra Spotlight: A New Paradigm in Rapid Change Detection Using Satellite Images............................................................. 46, 54 The Continuous Type Heat Treatment System Equipment for Micro Parts (CTHT)........................................................................................... 30 The Neutron and Gamma Ray Source Localization and Mapping Platform 2.0........................................................................................... 47 The Solvere CSD................................................................................................... 12 ThermalTracker-3D................................................................................................ 45 Timken Split Tapered Roller Bearing for Mainshaft............................................... 32 Tough SmCo.......................................................................................................... 32 Traffic Flow Impact (TFI) Tool................................................................................. 42 TruTag’s Edible Barcodes....................................................................................... 12 Ubiquitous Water Wand (UWAW).......................................................................... 28 UCC: Ultraconductive Copper-CNT Composite................................................... 31 UHS rapid sintering............................................................................................... 34 UVL Robotics: drone solution for warehouse inventory counts............................. 47 WEC-Sim............................................................................................................... 44

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ADVERTORIAL THE FUTURE OF FUEL CELL ANALYSIS

THE FUTURE OF FUEL CELL ANALYSIS An overview of opportunities using Atom Probe Tomography.

According to experts, we’re well on our way to using fuel cells to generate clean and efficient electrical power for a wide range of applications — from transportation to material handling to backup power. The growing focus on environmental issues, coupled with government initiatives and private-sector investment, are expected to drive the fuel cell market from USD 2.83 billion in 2019 to USD 7.12 billion by 2026. [1] Fuel cells Fuel cells are devices that use a fuel source, often hydrogen, and an oxidant, often oxygen,

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to create electricity from an electrochemical process. A key advantage of fuel cells is their ability to operate at higher efficiencies than conventional combustion engines and convert chemical energy to electrical energy with efficiencies of up to 60%, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). [2] Fuel cells are a preferred source not only for clean energy, but auxiliary and distributed power generation where grid power is unavailable, according to the DOE. Ty Prosa, senior research scientist and applications development team manager

The LEAP 5000XR is CAMECA’s atom probe microscope with unmatched 3D sub-nanometer analytical performance.

The instrument contributes to R&D across a wide range of applications — from metals to semiconductors to interconnect materials. Its detection efficiency is more than 40% extra atoms per nm3 analyzed.

at CAMECA explained that many types of fuel cells exist that differ primarily by the kind of electrolyte they use. Many include those currently under development, each with its own applications and advantages.

RESEARCHERS ARE USING APT TO BETTER UNDERSTAND HIGHTEMPERATURE OXIDE MATERIALS AND CONNECTING MATERIALS, INCLUDING SPECIALTY STEELS USED TO CHAIN CELLS TOGETHER.

Fuel-cell conversion processes typically involve hydrogen, which is expected to be a major energy carrier in future energy systems. The need to understand performance, durability and other barriers to fuel cell commercialization is critical for government, university and industry R&D, and demonstration and deployment.

This need has resulted in a surge in the nanoscale study of hydrogen distribution in materials and many other areas.

Atom Probe Tomography (APT) is fast becoming the advanced microscopy technique of choice

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ADVERTORIAL THE FUTURE OF FUEL CELL ANALYSIS

Figure showing randomized controlled trial process and resulting APT data: (a) Needleshaped sample tip (left) with the part analyzed by APT with a volume of 830,531 nm3. (b)­–(d) Elemental atom mappings of (b) Ni (gray), Zr (red), Y (yellow), with disk-shaped cutouts showing Y-rich precipitates embedded in the Ni phase with (ii) and (iii) exemplary concentration profiles at positions, encircled in (e). (c) The (Y, Zr)-oxide (i) with the concentration profile of Y, Zr and O inside a cylinder indicated by the black arrow in (c). (d) Ni, O (blue) signal. (e) The interconnected isosurface at 40 at. % Ni. [8]

for providing 3D maps of atom arrangements within sub-micron volumes of matter. [3] (See sidebar for more on APT).

temperature oxide materials and connecting materials, including specialty steels used to chain cells together.” [4]-[10]

APT R&D Developers are exploring a variety of fuel cell technologies for new alternative energy systems. Many experts believe solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are among the most promising systems due to their fuel flexibility, system efficiency and scalability.

Ceria and zirconia are SOFC ceramic materials that are among the most popular studied using APT, Prosa added. “APT can provide information on sub-micron phase characterization, analysis of grain boundaries, locations of dilute and mobile species at the surface, precipitate or cluster characterization and more.”

A range of SOFC technologies are being developed, and APT applications for them are expected to be ideal depending on material pore variables such as density and size, CAMECA’s Prosa, an APT specialist, said.

“There are extensive reports about researchers using APT to better understand both high-

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“These are important measurements for understanding evolution, and the control of materials structure and properties for active fuel cell elements operating at high temperatures,” he said. “When the APT specimen survivability is high, this can be a standard tool.”

One excellent demonstration of APT SOFC characterization involves zirconia, using a model yttria-stabilized-zirconia (YSZ) system to make it easier for correlative APT and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) analysis. (See figure.) “APT analysis is an ideal supplement to the STEM analyses when studying alloys and nanoscaled

precipitates less than 10 nm, as the elemental distribution of all atomic species, namely, Ni, Zr, Y, and oxygen can be quantitatively determined with atomic resolution,” stated J. Szász et al. [8] J. Szász et al. added that a reverse-current treatment procedure was used to increase triple-phase boundary densities between YSZ, Ni grains and pores, i.e., hydrogen. The process induced a layer of nanoscaled Ni, YSZ and pores, and increases anode performance by 40%.

From an APT application perspective, this process is compatible with the porous YSZ structure because the pores are substantially filled in with Ni. This clearly improves the structural integrity for survivability.

“The APT characterization of hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell materials provides key 3D chemical information at near-atomic scale. Precise measurement of sub-micron volumes and nanoscale features in 3D is the hallmark of the technique,” Prosa said.

Atom Probe Tomography Atom Probe Tomography (APT) is a powerful microscopy technique. It is the only method that offers both 3D imaging and chemical composition measurements at near-atomic scale (about 0.1-0.3nm resolution in depth and 0.3-0.5nm laterally).

APT has contributed to major advances in materials science, from alloy design to semiconductor analysis to fuel cell characterization. The CAMECA APT product line comprises the LEAP 5000 and EIKOS families.

Since the turn of the century, the user base of APT has expanded from a handful of researchers to thousands — and growing. The surge in publications featuring atom probe work is testament to its increasing popularity. For more, see CAMECA, “APT Tutorial.” [16]

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ADVERTORIAL THE FUTURE OF FUEL CELL ANALYSIS

Conclusion Research has long been underway in areas such as the study of separation membranes and catalysis, which is essential to manufacturing processes. [11], [12] APT also shows potential for providing near-atomic chemistry information for photoelectrode development. [13] Other R&D has focused on methods for analyzing carbonnanospheres, which are materials with great potential for energy development [14]. APT also has been used to help understand a magnesium alloy and hydrogen storage, a necessity for some fuel cell technologies. [15]

APT IS FAST BECOMING A KEY TECHNIQUE IN THE SOLID OXIDE FUEL CELL NANOCHARACTERIZATION TOOLKIT. After years of APT analysis of steels, it’s been clearly demonstrated that the technique is ideal for grainboundary, phase-boundary, and precipitate analysis in SOFC interconnect materials development, Prosa said.

With specimen preparation procedures similar to TEM, the measurement of elemental migration through the

microstructure during cell lifetime is possible with APT, according to experts. For many demonstrated reasons, “APT is fast becoming a key technique in the solid oxide fuel cell nano-characterization toolkit,” Prosa said.

CAMECA is a global supplier of microanalytical and metrology instrumentation for research and process control. CAMECA, a business unit of AMETEK, provides a diverse range of advanced characterization technologies that measure elemental and isotropic composition in materials down to atomic resolution, and equip government, academic and hightech industry labs around the world.

REFERENCES Mordor Intelligence, “Fuel Cell Market — Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021-2026).”

U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, “Fuel Cells.”

[3] I.E. McCarroll et al., “New frontiers in atom probe tomography: a review of research enabled by cryo and/or vacuum transfer systems,” June 2020, Materials Today.

[4] F. Li et al., “Quantitative atom probe analyses of rare-earth-doped ceria by femtosecond pulsed laser,” Ultramicroscopy, vol. 111, no. 6, pp. 589–594, 2011.

[5] J. Railsback et al, “Effectiveness of dense Gd-doped ceria barrier layers for (La,Sr)(Co,Fe)O3 cathodes on Yttria-stabilized zirconia electrolytes,” Solid State Ion., vol.

335, pp. 74–81, Jul. 2019, doi: 10.1016/j.ssi.2019.02.020.

[6] N. Madaan et al, “Impact of dynamic specimen shape evolution on the atom probe tomography results of doped epitaxial oxide multilayers: Comparison of experiment and simulation,” Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 107, no. 9, p. 091601, Aug. 2015, doi: 10.1063/1.4929705.

[7] J. Ding et al., “Influence of Nonstoichiometry on Proton Conductivity in Thin-Film Yttrium-Doped Barium Zirconate,” ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, vol. 10, no. 5, pp.

4816–4823, Feb. 2018, doi: 10.1021/acsami.7b16900.

[8] J. Szász et al., “High-Resolution Studies on Nanoscaled Ni/YSZ Anodes,” Chem. Mater., vol. 29, no. 12, pp. 5113–5123, Jun. 2017, doi: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.7b00360.

[9] A. Vayyala et al., “A Nanoscale Study of Thermally Grown Chromia on High-Cr Ferritic Steels and Associated Oxidation Mechanisms,” J. Electrochem. Soc., vol. 167, no.

6, p. 061502, Mar. 2020, doi: 10.1149/1945-7111/ab7d2e.

[10] L. Niewolak et al., “Temperature Dependence of Laves Phase Composition in Nb, W and Si-Alloyed High Chromium Ferritic Steels for SOFC Interconnect Applications,” J. Phase Equilibria Diffus., vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 471–484, Oct. 2015, doi: 10.1007/s11669-015-0403-5 [11] S. Sarker et al., “Developments in the Ni–Nb–Zr amorphous alloy membranes,” Applied Physics. A, vol. 122, no. 3, p. 168, Feb. 2016, doi: 10.1007/s00339-016-9650-5.

[12] J. Qu et al., “3D Atomic-Scale Insights into Anisotropic Core–Shell-Structured InGaAs Nanowires Grown by Metal–Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition,” Adv. Mater., vol. 29, no. 31, p. 1701888, Aug. 2017, doi: 10.1002/adma.201701888.

[13] Z. Nilsson et al., “Molecular Reaction Imaging of Single-Entity Photoelectrodes,” ACS Energy Lett., vol. 5, no. 5, pp. 1474–1486, May 2020, doi: 10.1021/ acsenergylett.0c00284.

[14] C. Ngo et al., “3D Atomic Understanding of Functionalized Carbon Nanostructures for Energy Applications,” ACS Appl. Nano Mater., vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 1600–1611, Feb. 2020, doi: 10.1021/acsanm.9b02360.

[15] Q. Luo et al., “Achieving superior cycling stability by in situ forming NdH 2 –Mg–Mg 2 Ni nanocomposites,” J. Mater. Chem. A, vol. 6, no. 46, pp. 23308–23317, 2018, doi: 10.1039/C8TA06668J. [16] CAMECA, “APT Tutorial.”

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MAGNIFYING THE POWER OF LITHIUM-ION BATTERY MATERIALS Analytical techniques seek to increase performance and power efficiency.

Q&A with Jesse Olson, Division Vice President and Business Unit Manager at CAMECA, Madison, WI.

With costs falling and demand rising, lithium-ion batteries are gaining widespread adoption for a variety of applications.

Few know this better than CAMECA, a business unit of AMETEK and a global leader in elemental and isotopic microanalysis for government, academic and industry research. CAMECA, a four-time R&D 100 Awards recipient, provides transformational characterization technology for lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries used in many applications. A dramatic drop in production costs of these batteries over the past decade has helped drive the R&D of better batteries — ones that will last longer, charge faster and have increased storage capacity.

CAMECA is a market leader in the analytical techniques of Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) and Atom Probe Tomography (APT). The IMS 7f-Auto is the latest version of the IMS xf dynamic SIMS, a

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versatile platform designed to meet increasing demands for precision analysis with high throughput and sensitivity.

CAMECA also offers the LEAP 5000, an atom probe microscope with superior detection efficiency across a spectrum of materials, and the NanoSIMS 50L, an ion microprobe that provides unsurpassed analytical performance at high lateral resolution. All three techniques have important applications in battery R&D. How do lithium-ion batteries work and where are they used?

Li-ion batteries are made of different layers of materials that enable electrochemical storage of electricity using anode (positive), cathode (negative) electrodes, and electrolytes. They use intercalated, or inserted, ions in layered compounds at the positive electrode, and typically graphite at the negative electrode.

Conventional lithium batteries are not rechargeable. In Li-

IMS 7f-Auto delivers high-precision elemental and isotopic analysis with enhanced ease-of-use and productivity. It is optimized for a variety of challenging applications, including glass, metals, ceramics, bulk materials and thin films. ion batteries, Li-ions move through an electrolyte, carrying energy between an anode and cathode electrode that allows them to charge and discharge repeatedly. As Li-ion batteries development took off in the 1990s, capacity and performance increased. Today, advanced Li-ion batteries power a wide range of applications, like smartphones, laptops and other consumer electronics, as well as

in aerospace, where they power large-scale electrical systems.

Manufacturers of plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles are also turning to Li-ion batteries as a carbon-neutral fuel source because of their longer cycle life and high energy density relative to their weight. Li-ion batteries also boast a low self-discharge rate, meaning they can retain their charge after months of storage.

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ADVERTORIAL MAGNIFYING THE POWER OF LITHIUM-ION BATTERY MATERIALS

What are its key advantages and disadvantages?

Li-ion batteries have significant advantages over competing rechargeable batteries such as those using nickel-cadmium or nickel-metal-hydrides. They feature one of the highest energy densities, operating at a higher voltage than Ni-Cd or Ni-MH, thus allowing for high-power applications. These advantages also allow them to meet the growing demand for smaller and lighter rechargeable batteries.

As demand for better performance intensifies, some characteristics of Li-ion battery materials still fall short. Notably, repeated chargedischarge cycles can reduce the energy efficiency of Li-ion batteries, causing voltage fades, or decreases, and less capacity to hold and release energy. Scientists and engineers are working to improve materials and methods with a focus on the electrochemical and structural mechanisms that degrade these systems.

What is secondary ion mass spectrometry?

While there are a variety of localized analysis methods for solid surfaces, SIMS is among the most widely used. SIMS is a powerful synergistic research instrument used in surface analysis, providing essential characterization in a range of fields, including geology, biology and electronics.

SIMS analyzes the composition of solid surfaces and thin films by sputtering, or bombarding, a sample’s surface with a focused

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ion beam. The ejected ions are then collected and analyzed with a mass spectrometer to identify their elemental and isotopic composition. SIMS is known for its unparalleled sensitivity in surface analysis and can detect to the ppb level in many cases.

SIMS analysis uses one of two modes: static or dynamic. Static SIMS uses a low-dose primary ion beam, generating atomic and molecular ions from the top monolayers. It provides information on organic and inorganic surface composition with a focus on molecular characterization.

Dynamic SIMS uses high-dose ion bombardment that erodes sample layers and conveys information about bulk elemental and isotopic composition. Because SIMS is based on the sputtering of material, it is by nature a destructive technique.

How is SIMS used in Li-ion battery applications?

Increasingly, our customers are conducting nanoscale research for many spatial and compositional analysis problems. SIMS can be applied to any solid material stable under high vacuum, including insulators, metals and semiconductors. To improve Li-ion battery design and performance, researchers are analyzing the transport mechanism in Libased thin films. Our SIMS IMS 7f instrument provides direct measurement with excellent sensitivity, low background and high precision. It has proven ideal for measuring lithium isotopes, a challenging low-mass species.

R&D IS A MAJOR FACTOR DRIVING THE RECHARGEABLE BATTERY MARKET, PARTICULARLY AS DEMAND FOR ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEMS AND ELECTRIC VEHICLES ACCELERATES IN TODAY’S RENEWABLEFUELED WORLD.

The IMS 7f-Auto offers full automation and operation efficiency. Its versatility makes it easy to switch among different research areas, including in-depth profiles that require optimized depth resolution; isotope ratio analyses that rely on excellent precision; and imaging for mapping that benefits from optimized lateral resolution.

This research on transport mechanisms is accomplished by measuring the lithium diffusion coefficient, or rate of diffusion, in the cathode material. As part of a green technology initiative, researchers at Tohoku University in Japan used a CAMECA dynamic SIMS and ion-exchange method to measure the tracer diffusion coefficient of lithium manganese oxide (LiMn204) thin films, a promising material for Li-ion batteries.

Is nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS) similar to SIMS? NanoSIMS and SIMS operate on the same general principles. The

NanoSIMS microprobe is used to acquire nanoscale resolution measurements of a sample’s elemental and isotopic composition.

It provides unique mapping capability with combined lateral resolution, benchmark sensitivity and high mass resolving power.

NanoSIMS 50L is optimized for ultra-high lateral resolution SIMS analysis. It can simultaneously deliver key performance metrics that other instruments must obtain individually. NanoSIMS 50L can deliver a sensitivity of ppb for some elements, with lateral resolution of 50 nm together with a large total field of view of 50X50 microns.

While the NanoSIMS 50L has many applications in biology, it also has applications for the characterization of advanced materials. In particular, it shows great promise for lithium, as the element produces excellent ionization yield in SIMS analysis.

In the quest to reduce Li-ion battery voltage and energy fade, for example, researchers are using NanoSIMS to study lithium- and manganese-rich (LMR) layered structure materials and other promising cathodes for energydense Li-ion batteries.

What is atom probe tomography?

APT is the gold standard for quantitative elemental analysis due to its position-sensitive detection capabilities that can measure the lateral location of nearly every atom in a material. Conventional electron microscopy images are 1D or 2D projections of 3D materials, and they miss very fine-scale elements.

APT delivers 3D location and

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isotopic identification, providing the highest spatial resolution available for 3D chemical analysis.

APT applies high-voltage pulses to a needle-shaped specimen, stripping atoms from the needle’s tip and converting them into charged ions in a process known as field evaporation.

Our continual refinements are focused on increased throughput, improved efficiency, improved mass resolving power and reduced acquisition times.

APT’s ability to deliver compositional complexity at the nanoscale has prompted researchers to pursue applications in a wide range of disciplines. Because APT can convey 3D data at near atomic resolution with a chemical sensitivity reaching ppm, it has been successfully used to analyze everything from the oldest minerals on Earth to the latest nanomaterials.

Our APT product line includes the flagship Local Electrode Atom Probe (LEAP) microscope, a four-time R&D 100 Awards winner. LEAP was recognized for producing 3D scientific information used by scientists and engineers to develop transformational technologies that are stronger, faster, lighter, longer-lasting and more cost-efficient. Our latest instrument, the LEAP 5000, provides subnanometer analytical performance with exceptional precision, reproducibility and detection efficiency across a variety of materials.

APT is known for its unmatched ability to characterize fine-scale elements, including light elements, with high spatial resolution and high mass sensitivity. The R&D community

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APT, SIMS AND NANOSIMS ARE EXPECTED TO BE WIDELY ADOPTED FOR USE IN MICROANALYSIS OF NEXT-GENERATION BATTERY MATERIALS. anticipates this technique will soon see wide adoption for storage capacity and cycling performance research.

How is APT used in Li-ion battery applications?

APT delivers location and isotopic identification in 3D — the highest spatial resolution available for chemical analysis. This enables our customers to undertake nanoscale research in a variety of spatial and compositional analyses, including Li-ion battery materials.

What’s next?

Researchers and developers rely on a fleet of analytical tools to identify methods and materials for optimizing Liion battery technologies. R&D is a major factor driving the multibillion-dollar rechargeable battery market, particularly as demand for energy storage systems and electric vehicles accelerates in today’s renewable-fueled world.

To keep pace, labs must be equipped to research and develop novel cathode, anode, electrode and other materials. APT, SIMS and nanoSIMS are expected to be widely adopted as the instruments of choice for elemental and isotopic microanalysis of nextgeneration battery materials.

In battery research, APT sample preparation for powders is rapidly evolving. For larger battery particles, a conventional focused ion beam liftout method enables the extraction of APT specimens from single particles.

This allows for comparisons between particles and at various locations within the same particle to better study particle-to-particle variation, including in smaller particles.

APT is ideal for use on commercially available cathode materials, including nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NiMnCo) cells in batteries. The material shows promise for extending lifetime and providing high-rate performance. NiMnCo cathode materials are expected to expand battery applications, notably for use in electric vehicles.

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ADVERTORIAL Nuclear Materials Characterization: Six critical roles your R&D team will want to know about.

NUCLEAR MATERIALS CHARACTERIZATION: Six critical roles your R&D team will want to know about.

By CAMECA experts Robert Ulfig, Paula Peres, Anne-Sophie Robbes, Aurélien Thomen Ask any nuclear professional: Radiation is everywhere. While radioactive materials are often misunderstood, today’s characterization techniques allow for superior detection and analysis and play a vital role in taking the mystery out of these materials.

Nuclear scientists and engineers now have access to analytical instruments that enable the characterization of irradiated fuels. As a result, they can study its microstructure and composition to predict its behavior and develop strategies to prevent the release of radiation in accident scenarios.

Others need to perform highprecision elemental and isotopic analyses of radioactive samples in a safe environment. Advanced instruments are now available for that. Whatever the need, understanding these six critical roles will assist in identifying a complete solution to your nuclear materials characterization challenges.

1. Ensuring longevity of nuclear materials Understanding the diffusion and migration mechanisms of fission products in nuclear fuel and structural materials is key to ensuring their longevity. For

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nuclear materials researchers, determining the behavior of noble gases produced by fission is of particular importance.

For example, low-solubility fission products such as xenon and krypton can agglomerate into bubbles that induce mechanical stress in the fuel pellets, or be released from the pellets, increasing pressure within the cladding. This second outcome can create serious safety issues. Also, helium migration and trapping may lead to void swelling, hardening or creep fracture, and negatively affect the microstructural and mechanical properties of structural materials.

Due to its outstanding depthprofiling and ion-imaging capabilities, dynamic Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) is routinely used in the study of irradiation effects to better understand the migration behavior of fission products in nuclear materials. SIMS provides elemental as well as isotopic information ranging from low mass (H) to highmass species (Pu and beyond).

This technique is also known for its high sensitivity (low detection limits) for several elements of interest, including light elements and low-yield fission products.

The SKAPHIA shielded EPMA can analyze almost all elements of the periodic table, revealing compositional information for both major and trace elements of a radioactive sample. The information is obtained from sub-micron areas with excellent precision and accuracy.

2. Characterizing nuclear fuel for improved safety Nuclear scientists rely on both computational simulations and laboratory experiments to study and reduce the risks of environmental emissions of radioactive products in the event of a nuclear accident.

Nuclearized analytical tools

are used to characterize highly radioactive samples in a safe environment. The experimental data obtained can be integrated in sequences to better predict events in case of an accident.

Such scenarios include loss of cooling accidents and the failure of structural components.

ACTINIS is a shielded SIMS instrument that allows researchers

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and sample-stage movement enables fast particle screening over a large sample area (a few cm’s in diameter). The screening measurements provide the exact location of U particles and rapid indication of the enrichment level (235U content).

Derived from the IMS 7f-GEO SIMS, ACTINIS delivers high-sensitivity depth-profiling, isotope ratio measurements, as well as element and isotope mapping of highly radioactive materials in a safe environment.

to perform high-precision elemental and isotopic analyses of radioactive samples. The study of nuclear reactions occurring during incore irradiation is made possible by performing isotopic ratio measurements. The physical and chemical behavior of fission products can also be investigated thanks to SIMS excellent lateral and depthresolution capabilities.

The CAMECA shielded Electron Probe Microanalyzer (shielded EPMA) tool, SKAPHIA, provides compositional information about radioactive materials. It enables the study of the microstructure and chemical composition of nuclear fuel under accidental conditions. The unparalleled precision and accuracy obtained from sub-micron areas allow for detailed observations of interactions between the nuclear fuel and cladding material. EPMA also is used to investigate the impact of the oxidizing or reducing atmospheres emitted during incidental conditions on fission products speciation.

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3. Verifying peaceful use of nuclear materials Radioactive particle analysis has been largely applied to air samples collected from nuclear handling facilities when searching for undeclared nuclear activities. Modern safeguard labs are equipped for timely analyses, allowing for detection of often scarce and small (micron to submicron) uraniumbearing particles within an immense background of environmental particles.

This enables accurate and precise measurements of the U isotope composition of individual particles.

For μm-sized uranium particle analyses, SIMS is the only technique that can both localize particles of interest and determine the uranium isotopic composition of single particles.

The combination of ion mapping

The U isotope signature can then be determined from individual particles as small as a few picograms (10–12 grams). Largegeometry SIMS instruments, such as CAMECA’s IMS 1300-HR3, are equipped with automated particle-screening software, and provide the best sensitivity, precision and throughput for these applications.

4. Optimizing nuclear waste management and evaluation Understanding the long-term behavior of glasses used to confine nuclear waste is critical to their safe geological disposal.

Research of glass-alteration mechanisms requires a focus on the formation of altered layers that develop in contact with an aqueous solution.

This requires elemental indepth characterization as well as the use of isotopic tracers, a powerful method for studying the exchanges between the solution and glass. Offering excellent depth-profiling capabilities for low-concentration elements and high-precision isotopic ratio analysis, dynamic SIMS and Atom Probe Tomography (APT) are a powerful team for analyzing nuclear glasses and investigating glass-alteration mechanisms.

RADIATION IS EVERYWHERE. AND WHILE RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS ARE OFTEN MISUNDERSTOOD, TODAY’S CHARACTERIZATION TECHNIQUES PLAY A VITAL ROLE IN TAKING THE MYSTERY OUT OF THESE MATERIALS. Shielded EPMA is a tool of choice for characterizing lanthanide phase formation and elements redistribution in such complex fuels. Other studies focus on the long-lived minor actinides (MA) that result from irradiation of oxide fuels in light water reactors because they increase the radiotoxicity of nuclear waste. To facilitate disposal, scientists have investigated various processes to recycle the MA. One consists of separating the MA from the spent fuel and incorporating the MA in novel U-Pu-Zr metallic fuels prior to irradiation under a fast-neutron spectrum.

EPMA offers excellent spectral resolution (≈10eV), which is essential for differentiating complex overlapping spectral peaks.

5. Controlling corrosion and stress corrosion cracking (SCC) SCC is a form of corrosion, or tiny blemishes, that can cause huge problems. They can appear unexpectedly in metals used in steam generators and structural components of nuclear and conventional power plants. In severe cases, major

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ADVERTORIAL Nuclear Materials Characterization: Six critical roles your R&D team will want to know about.

components must be removed and replaced, costing months of downtime and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Although electron microscopy has been used to study SCC for decades, only with the relatively recent use of NanoSIMS and Local Electrode Atom Probe (LEAP) have researchers been able to study the surprisingly complex chemistry at the crack growth front, with nanoscale spatial resolution and trace element analysis in 3D. Not only does oxygen penetrate the crack causing expansion and more stress at the growth front, but key anti-oxidation agents such as aluminum and chromium show strong diffusion away from the growth front, which exacerbates the problem.

Alloy composition and water chemistry have been shown to strongly influence crack growth.

SIMS and APT have given researchers the tools necessary to improve the alloy as well as to control lead and other trace elements in the coolant that can be detrimental to these structural materials.

6. Addressing fusion reactor challenges The nuclear science R&D community has long been pursuing clean and inexpensive energy from fusion, but technical challenges remain. They must be resolved, particularly as the most ambitious international project on this front, International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), will be operational in a few years.

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One of the most demanding materials problems is the longevity of plasma-facing materials, especially in the plasma-diverting region of the vacuum vessel. Here materials must hold up against plasma temperatures 10 times hotter than the sun’s core (150M° C) while withstanding high-energy hydrogen and helium implantation (up to 14MeV). Researchers have studied tungsten alloys with complex heat treatments, as well as radiation-resistant nanocrystalline and highentropy alloys with this application in mind.

Understanding the 3D nanoscale mixing caused by high-temperature ion bombardment is key to designing alloys that won’t erode. The erosion prevention is not only critical from a structural point of view, heavymetal ions also have a dramatic cooling effect on plasmas.

Minimizing this loss is a key criterion for the success of ITER and the other approximately dozen fusion-energy projects in progress around the world.

CAMECA experts: Robert Ulfig is senior project manager for EIKOS and LEAP instruments. He brings extensive expertise in materials science, and leads technical workshops and trains stakeholders in the engineering, production, software, and manufacturing professions.

THE NUCLEAR SCIENCE R&D COMMUNITY HAS LONG BEEN PURSUING CLEAN AND INEXPENSIVE ENERGY FROM FUSION, BUT TECHNICAL CHALLENGES REMAIN. Paula Peres is product manager for SIMS instruments, IMS 7f-Auto, ACTINIS and IMS 1300-HR3 product lines. She regularly speaks at international conferences and has published more than 20 papers on dynamic SIMS. Anne-Sophie Robbes is product manager for EPMA instruments, SX5-Tactis and SKAPHIA product lines. She regularly gives advanced application training and participates in international conferences.

characterization instruments for nuclear and other materials used in a broad array of applications.

SKAPHIA is one of the company’s new-generation instruments, a shielded Electron Probe that supports post-irradiation materials analysis and research. ACTINIS is the world’s unique shielded magnetic sector SIMS, performing high-precision elemental and isotopic analyses of radioactive samples in a safe environment.

Aurélien Thomen is product manager for NanoSIMS instruments. He regularly speaks at international conferences and has published papers on applications for NanoSIMS in biology and planetary sciences.

CAMECA is a global leader in elemental and isotopic microanalysis solutions for government, academic and industry labs. A business unit of AMETEK and four-time R&D 100 Awards recipient, CAMECA provides transformational

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SIMS, APT AND SEMICONDUCTORS: Q&A WITH THREE EXPERTS AT CAMECA Olivier Dulac, Robert Ulfig and Karthik Sivaramakrishnan address the techniques, applications and future of semiconductor R&D. Robert Ulfig is senior project manager, EIKOS and LEAP. He brings broad expertise in materials science, semiconductor manufacturing and technology to product development worldwide. He also leads technical workshops and trains stakeholders in the engineering, production, software and manufacturing professions.

Olivier Dulac is sales director, semiconductors. With a background in materials science, he brings 30 years of experience in semiconductor processes and characterization technologies. His areas of expertise include microele ctronics, new ITC technologies and CRM software implementation.

Karthik Sivaramakrishnan is a product manager, semiconductors. With diverse experience in materials science and product management, he leads a team of SIMS application scientists. His focus includes adding customer value with novel applications and roadmaps for next-generation products.

CAMECA is a global leader in elemental and isotopic microanalysis for government, academic, and industry research and process control. CAMECA, a business unit of AMETEK, provides a diverse range of advanced characterization technologies, including Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) and Atom Probe Tomography (APT) nanoanalysis and metrology solutions for semiconductors.

These instruments are recognized by the international IC community as best-in-class for the investigation of new materials and structures for semiconductors.

How does SIMS work and what are its advantages?

Olivier Dulac: SIMS is widely used in semiconductor R&D for surface

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or in-depth elemental composition analysis of natural or engineered materials. SIMS uses ion sources to sputter and ionize the material of interest. Once extracted, the material’s elemental constituents are identified and quantified by a mass spectrometer.

Proper mass and energy filtering of generated ionized subspecies, coupled with highly sensitive detectors, allow for the characterization of a fraction of one or more elements in a material. This goes well below 1 ppm, with detection limits routinely going as low as 1 ppt, which translates to 1E10 at/cm3 in the semiconductor world.

The advantage of SIMS is the very fact of its destructive nature.

The AKONIS SIMS combines superior analytical capabilities and automation, ensuring repeatability across tools for fab process control.

It allows R&D professionals to profile and even image material in a volume without the ambiguous modeling often required by optical or contactless techniques.

The lateral resolution of the technique allows users to pinpoint a specific area from the region of interest. The resolution can reach the µm level on advanced instruments. The depth resolution — the capability to distinguish composition variation in depth — goes down to a level of a couple of nanometers.

These benefits and features make SIMS the technique of choice when developing and manufacturing advanced

materials. This is particularly true in the semiconductor industry, a leader in in-depth profiling of composition, thickness and the overall dimension of regions of interest.

What are its key advantages and disadvantages?

Robert Ulfig: APT is a three-dimensional, nanoscale

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ADVERTORIAL SIMS, APT AND SEMICONDUCTORS: Q&A WITH THREE EXPERTS AT CAMECA

compositional measurement instrument that is being adopted in semiconductor R&D and manufacturing. A key reason for this is the growing number of advanced alloys and microelectronics with nanoscale 3D features that need to be quantitatively characterized.

Much like transmission electron microscopy, the specimen must be specially prepared. Instead of a thin sheet, the target geometry is needle-shaped, with the features to be studied situated within the ~200 nm needle diameter. An electric field, coupled with a pulsed laser, ionizes individual atoms and directs them into an imaging time-of-flight mass spectrometer.

The detection system identifies up to 80% of the atoms, and an algorithm automatically recreates the specimen in a 3D digital model.

This results in a nearly complete 3D representation of the location of the atoms with nanoscale spatial accuracy.

As the detector tracks all incoming ions with the same efficiency, calculating the composition of any volume in any direction is as simple as counting the atoms. Powerful, easy-to-use software provides quantitative composition profiles, 3D views, and surface views from any angle without the need for a standard reference. This technique can characterize nanoscale-buried interfaces in 3D like no other microscopy available today.

What are some semiconductor applications for SIMS? Karthik Sivaramakrishnan: Dynamic SIMS has been used for

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decades in semiconductor R&D as a superior depth-profiling tool for implantation.

It is also an effective technique for failure analysis in the event of contamination. This is because of its high sensitivity for analyzing a wide range of elements — including hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and other light elements that are difficult to detect.

Dynamic SIMS also is used to cross-check or clarify results obtained from more conventional in-line techniques such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy or X-ray fluorescence. These methods are less sensitive but they are also nondestructive, making it easier to re-introduce the wafer into the fabrication process flow.

Today, SIMS is used in advanced logic technology for analyzing dopants in both the active device region and in memory applications for studying the composition of dielectrics, which play a critical role in device leakage. However, with the advent of IoT, advanced driver assistance system technologies for autonomous driving, and 5G mobile communications, we are seeing an increase in the use of compound semiconductors to make the devices.

These can be III-V-based microLEDs, radio frequency, infrared and other sensing devices, or quantum well-based vertical cavity surface emitting lasers.

In photovoltaics, even more complex compounds such as copper indium gallium selenide

USERS ARE EVOLVING FROM SPECIALIZED SIMS EXPERTS TO FAB OPERATORS WHO HANDLE A BROAD ARRAY OF TOOLS USING FACTORY AUTOMATION. and perovskites are being used to improve solar cell efficiencies.

Moreover, we are seeing a change in how SIMS for semiconductors is being used. Fabs are looking to bring the tool near-line, if not completely in-line. This assists in compressing the turnaround time for data — both for process development in new technologies and for rapid yield learning in highvolume manufacturing.

As a result, end users are evolving from specialized SIMS experts to fab operators who handle a broad array of tools using factory automation. The bottom line: SIMS tools are becoming almost completely automated, with simplified user interfaces.

The automation ensures high repeatability of results from processing data collected by the spectrometers. Our AKONIS is a pioneering tool that meets these challenging demands.

Olivier Dulac: When I started my career in the early 1990s, my doctorate was in material sciences and R&D with a focus on the introduction of III-V in high-volume semiconductor manufacturing as a “replacement” for silicon complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology.

SIMS was critical to analyzing these engineered materials.

In the semiconductor industry this ultimately became the new reality — the so-called “morethan-Moore” era that sought to increase functionalities by integrating smart materials on top of the crucial silicon base. These materials have not replaced silicon; rather, they have complemented it while silicon-based logic technology is being pushed to its limits.

With silicon pushing the limits with very small doses of dopants, tiny PN junctions, impurities coming from the environment or left over from process enhancers become important to identify.

These shallow junctions, deep implanted light elements or device killers will continue to be important application areas for years to come.

For compound materials such as gallium nitride and silicon carbide, which are key in the development of electric vehicles, the manufacturing process requires measuring a fullgrown stack of several layers at once. This requires both depth resolution and acceptable speed of measurement.

What is a semiconductor application for APT? Robert Ulfig: APT has been used extensively in the R&D side of silicon-based semiconductors to measure the composition in and around the transistor gate, channel, source, and drain for planar and 3D structures. Instead of well-established procedures for measuring test pads and

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extrapolating what that might mean for transistor performance or carrier density, APT provides compositional data from the components themselves.

The diffusion of dopants or contaminants to and from the many interfaces during various thermal processes is often an area of particular interest.

For example, there are many publications that address the characterization of dopant diffusion in and around silicides.

APT is being used in near-line process monitoring to measure dopants and contaminants, and some groups use it extensively for failure analysis. Although highvolume manufacturing monitoring is a relatively new application in silicon-based fabs, APT has been used in production monitoring of nitride-based compound semiconductors for years. It also has been used extensively for R&D and competitive analysis in that field.

The growth in semiconductor applications has driven automation in focused ion beam-scanning electron microscopy, used as the basis for APT specimen preparation, data collection and data reconstruction. Automation in these three aspects of the analysis brings the time to knowledge down from days to hours.

I EXPECT TO SEE APT DIFFERENTIATE INTO INSTRUMENTS THAT WILL SATISFY THE R&D COMMUNITY’S NEED FOR MORE FLEXIBILITY, AND THE SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY’S NEED FOR BETTER AUTOMATION, PRECISION AND ACCURACY. What do you foresee for these techniques and their applications?

Olivier Dulac: A major driver in the evolution of the semiconductor industry has been the shrinking of device sizes to enhance performance — while using the same material base of silicon and its oxides. I foresee a point of no return when more exotic materials will take the lead. This means we’ll move from dimensional metrology to dimension and material metrology, also referred to as elemental composition.

Compositional techniques like SIMS and APT are well-adapted to cope with these trends by offering μm to nm lateral and depth resolution.

We will continue to see these mature technologies become automated, allowing for increases in reproducible outcomes of analysis and high-volume manufacturing.

Examples of this are automated ion alignment of analysis beam and detection, and the use of a knowledge database for automated

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quantification of elemental information coming from materials.

Robert Ulfig: The integration of APT into commercial nanoelectronics analysis has greatly influenced its maturation. The demands of this industry are as high as the reward: Faster and more efficient development and production of products. APT is a relative newcomer to this arena and there are boundless opportunities for improvements.

These improvements could include making the technique more broadly applicable or developing versions of the instrument that specialize in specific measurements that today still remain challenging.

One example is the measuring of nitrogen, which has a near-mass spectral overlap with silicon in a mass-to-charge spectrum.

Another example is the shifting from qualitative to quantitative measurements of hydrogen.

I expect to see APT differentiate into instruments that will satisfy the R&D community’s need for more flexibility, and the semiconductor industry’s need for better automation, precision and accuracy.

• cameca.info@ametek.com

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G R EE N L A BS

Facing sustainability in the lab Programs identify environmental offenders in the quest for green laboratories.

By Becky Chambers Hennessy, contributing writer

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Scientific

research leaders are taking a long look in the mirror. They see their laboratories as home to beneficial scientific breakthroughs, in areas from epidemiology and the coronavirus to climate change and greenhouse gases. They’re also recognizing them as resource-intensive spaces with enormous carbon footprints.

It’s an irony that’s not lost on a growing number of research scientists around the world who understand the need for sustainability in the lab. But, as with all significant change, “there is still a misconception that incorporating sustainability into lab work is going to come at the cost of scientific integrity,” said Rachael Relph, chief sustainability officer at My Green Lab (MGL), an organization dedicated to building a global culture of sustainability in science through a suite of internationally recognized programs.

That’s where the nonprofit MGL and other groups with similar missions come in. The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Federal Energy Management Program estimates that scientific labs use far more energy and water than typical office buildings — anywhere from three to 10 times more, according to various experts. Labs also generate some 5.5 million metric tons of plastic a year, comparable to 220 times the weight of the Statue of Liberty, according to sustainable biotech firm Genova Inc. “Assuming that half of all American laboratories can reduce

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their energy use by 30%, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that the nation could reduce its annual energy consumption by 84 trillion Btu,” Relph said. “This is equivalent to the energy consumed by 840,000 households.”

Raising the bar through green collaboration Lab sustainability initiatives also provide a significant return on investment, cutting lab operation and utility costs and freeing up resources. Case studies indicate a potential cost savings of 20% to 40% for research labs that employ energy-efficient design strategies compared to standard lab practices, according to the DOE’s Better Buildings Smart Labs Accelerator.

MGL programs, created in collaboration with multiple organizations, are widely viewed as a global standard for sustainable lab practices. MGL programs include the International Laboratory Freezer Challenge, co-sponsored with the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL) and running for its sixth consecutive year starting in January 2022. (See sidebar.)

Another key MGL program is the ACT Environmental Impact Factor Label, dedicated to Accountability, Consistency and Transparency in energy and water use, packaging, disposal and other areas. A desktop audit is conducted in collaboration with SMS Collaborative and manufacturers in areas such as energy and water use, packaging and disposal. ACT-labeled products address the need for third-party verification of the environmental impact of the products they use, Figure 1.

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There’s also the My Green Lab Certification, MGL’s flagship program for promoting laboratory sustainability best practices. This program is recognized by the United Nations Race to Zero campaign as a key measure of progress toward a zero-carbon future. To date, MGL has certified more than 700 labs worldwide across various sectors, including academia, government, hospitals, pharma and biotech.

Figure 1. My Green Lab’s ACT label is used by scientists, sustainability directors and procurement specialists around the world. | My Green Lab

Getting certified through My Green Lab One international participant in MGL’s certification program is biopharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.

The company had achieved ISO 14001, 15001 and other external certifications. In 2020, It collaborated with MGL to put in place green lab programs across its research sites worldwide.

The programs include less visible targets, such as timer plugs to shut off equipment after hours and electronic pipettes for calibrating

Cool game gets hot for one competitor International Freezer Challenge honors U of I with 2021 “Winning Streak Award.”

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is continuing a hot streak in arguably the coolest game around. The university was recognized for a fourth straight year after earning first place in the Academic Category for reducing the environmental impact of its cold storage practices in its facilities.

This year, U of I’s 34 labs and 310 freezer units combined saved about 385,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh), or the equivalent of 35 typical U.S. homes, as a part of the International Laboratory Freezer Challenge co-sponsored by My Green Lab and the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories (I2SL). The amount is a new campus record.

R&D World caught up with U of I science community members to ask about efforts that led to the prestigious award: Research Associate Deborah S. Katz-Downie of the Downie Lab, School of Integrative Biology; Professor Martin Gruebele of the Gruebele Lab, affiliated with the Departments of Chemistry, Physics, the Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology, and the Beckman Institute; and Getting more Energy Efficiency and Conservation people to take action Specialist Paul Foote. is important both to the freezer challenge and to reaching our campus goals of Did incorporating achieving carbon neutrality sustainability in cold storage as soon as possible. Every management interfere with researcher can your science research? make a difference.

Deborah S. Katz-Downie: Incorporating sustainability in cold storage management

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did not interfere; in fact, it helped us to organize and improve our attention to detail when it comes to all lab members tracking samples throughout all lab protocols. Lab managers therefore spent less time trying to figure out who owned what in the freezers and whether they were still needed.

Martin Gruebele: No. While reorganizing storage did require some time, we also were able to eliminate samples that were no longer needed and organize inventory better to speed up locating items. In addition, we coupled most of the reorganization with a lab renovation. The renovation made access to some equipment impossible but allowed group members’ time to be gainfully spent on organizational tasks.

What key cold-storage management practices did you employ?

Paul Foote: Top action items achieved during this year’s competition include retiring 21 freezer units of the 310 that were part of the competition. We also upgraded 11 freezers to more efficient units, including 161 that are shared with other labs. Not least, we were able to discard more than two million samples.

I should emphasize that our researchers’ familiarity with the challenge’s best practices, combined with impacts of the pandemic, generated opportunities to evaluate sample management. Discarding millions of samples made it easy to retire freezer units. Twenty-one units is the largest quantity retired to date.

In what ways did you go beyond standard cold storage practices?

Martin Gruebele: We reorganized our storage in two freezers so that one holds older, less frequently accessed samples in high density, while the other allows for faster access.

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records across its Cambridge sites in the United Kingdom. That move is projected to save 6,400 sheets of paper a year.

“It’s about asking everyone in our labs to have a sustainability mindset in everything they do,” said Pernilla Sörme, AstraZeneca green labs project lead, global sustainability. AstraZeneca has committed to zero carbon emissions by 2025 and being carbon-negative across its value chain by 2030.

MGL’s certification program now serves as a key indicator of progress for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change High Level Climate Champions’ 2030 Breakthroughs campaign.

The program will assist pharmaceutical and medical technology companies in reaching the goal of a zero-carbon world by 2050.

While growing numbers of

organizations are opting for MGL certification, others are following their own established programs and certification.

In academia, it’s often cited that campus labs consume twice to two-thirds of a school’s energy relative to total campus space. Among universities with their own long-running programs to improve the sustainability and safety of their labs is Cornell University, based in Ithaca, N.Y.

Obtaining certification via independent programs Cornell’s labs span 3,200 different rooms on its Ithaca campus. They comprise about 20% of the square footage and account for 44% of its energy consumption, according to Cornell. The university’s Climate Action Plan serves as the overarching blueprint for carbon neutrality by 2035.

International Laboratory Freezer Challenge: •

•

•

In 2021, some 222 labs representing 113 research institutions around the world completed the freezer challenge.

The combined savings are ~4.3 million kWh/year, the equivalent of reducing carbon emissions by 3,000 metric tons/ year. This savings is up from 3.2 million kWh/year in 2020.

The 2022 Freezer Challenge starts on Jan. 1, 2022, with participation open until July 1.

Credit: My Green Lab

What cost and other benefits did you realize in participating in the freezer challenge?

Paul Foote: Utility cost avoidance is a tremendous benefit. In addition, lab operations are streamlined and have become more efficient, organized, and sustainable. When the pandemic hit, our labs simply had to recall actions from the past year and list them on the score sheet, thus giving them a leg up in the competition.

What can freezer challenge participants working in labs outside of academia learn from your program?

| University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Paul Foote: Lab managers say participating in the freezer challenge helped their operations by prioritizing cold-storage best practices in lab operations. Efficiency gains, sample management techniques and energysaving advantages become a permanent part of lab procedures. Many of our principal investigators are thankful they implemented these strategies and best practices due to these ongoing benefits.

How will you improve best practices in preparation for the 2022 International Freezer Challenge?

improve our best practices in preparation for the 2022 challenge by training new lab personnel in freezer storage protocols. This will ensure a smooth transition to documenting our 2022 freezer challenge efforts.

Paul Foote: For one, we’ll continue our focus on temperature-tuning because the benefits are terrific: Energy savings, increased equipment lifecycle, along with sample safety and integrity to name a few. We recognize the advantages of adjusting freezer set points to warmer settings. So, temperature-tuning will be a key focal point in the 2022 competition.

Overall, our primary focus will continue to be on promoting the program and securing the commitment of more labs to participate. Our Facilities & Services division through various initiatives has continued to emphasize that conserving energy is everyone’s responsibility on campus and a part of a larger team effort.

Getting more people to take action is important both to the freezer challenge and to reaching our campus goals of achieving carbon neutrality as soon as possible. Every researcher can make a difference.

Deborah S. Katz-Downie: We will

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Figure 2:.The Cornell Green Lab Program’s “Greener Lab Chemicals” guide is one of several that help campus labs complete multiple tasks to receive the university’s Green Lab Certification. | Cornell University

This ambitious sustainability goal leverages the campus as a “living lab,” a place-based incubator for sustainability across campus and in coordination with city and other initiatives. Cornell’s Green Lab Program started in 2013 and seeks to help with the global challenges of climate change by co-creating innovations locally — down to the individual lab level.

Because lab science is diverse, each lab at Cornell has unique needs. As such, lab leaders address sustainability at each participating lab with a focus on engaging students in applicable green initiatives.

“All of our lab programs are designed to build sustainability knowledge and skills,” Cornell Sustainability Engagement Manager Kimberly Anderson said. “The goal is for students to carry what they’ve learned about best practices, green technologies and more into their future careers.”

Much student engagement started with Cornell’s Green Lab Certification program some 10 years ago. Lab teams follow a guide and checklist for adopting a variety of green practices, benchmarking current standards and setting goals for improvement. Among the most energyintensive equipment at research labs are chemical fume hoods, used to capture airborne contaminants and remove them via an exhaust system. A single typical fume hood uses more energy than three average homes, according to the EPA. Cornell’s Ithaca campus is home to 1,700 fume hoods. Key to their correct use

is keeping the sash closed when they are unattended or not in use. The university’s comprehensive Laboratory Ventilation Management Program (LVMP) relies on multiple campus and other partnerships to ensure safe and sustainable ventilation systems. LVMP has saved more energy than any other behavioral program at Cornell’s Ithaca campus, Laboratory Ventilation Specialist Ellen Sweet said.

“The types of science that a green lab program is geared toward is that which has chemical emissions that are controlled, in part, with mechanical ventilation, and those with rooms that have high heat and plug loads,” Sweet said. “Addressing these concerns can have the most impact on direct costs. The other areas of focus are water usage as well as green chemistry,” Figure 2.

Choosing a sustainability lifestyle “The United Nations has declared this the decade of action — the 10 years that are most critical for us to address the causes of climate change if we are to avoid the worst impacts. In many ways, the scientific community is at the forefront of climate change; many in our community are working to directly address this challenge through research and innovation, said MGL’s Relph. “At the same time, there is a growing awareness that science alone will not save us — that all of us, as individuals, need to take an active role in making sustainability part of our every day.” &

An AstraZeneca R&D lab at the company’s Cambridge Biomedical Campus, United Kingdom. | AstraZeneca

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T RI P L E H ELI X

MIXED PARTNERSHIPS INVOLVE INDUSTRY, GOVERNMENT LABS AND ACADEMIA FOR A WINNING FORMULA

BY GORDON FELLER, CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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INCREASINGLY, TRILATERAL R&D PARTNERSHIPS — linking government with academia and industry — are considered critical to the success of Silicon Valley. Such mixed partnerships succeed when they link industrial firms with governments with universities, especially as real-world variations of the “triple helix” model of innovation, which is a more common term outside the U.S. To better understand big changes sweeping through the region’s R&D centers, we spoke with some leaders developing new kinds of alliances at three prominent organizations. Each of these are working, in their own ways, to reinvent R&D.

Stanford University: Projects into products During 25 years at Stanford University, Bill Cockayne founded Stanford Foresight, the foundation of Stanford’s Design Futures. He serves as Academic Director of Stanford’s Silicon Valley Innovation Academy & Innovation Studio.

Cockayne spent the first decade of his career in shipping organizations before moving into government and corporate R&D labs. “Since then, I’ve sat at the juncture of universities, nascent startups and the corporate innovation aspirations,” he said. Each cohort has made significant improvements “as a partner” in just the last decade.

Reflecting on all of those Stanford years, Cockayne says that the university has, “become much better at articulating the value a sponsored project or student team can bring to a large company’s innovation goals. Only yesterday, I sat with a colleague from Stanford who’s having this exact conversation with leading research labs across the globe.” While universities traditionally relied on their reputation to bring partners onto campus, Cockayne thinks that “faculty can now point to projects that converted into actual products and services for sponsors. This focus on a partner’s innovation top-line doesn’t occur at the expense of the university’s mission to educate future leaders.”

Looking ahead at 2022 and beyond, Cockayne is mindful that, “in the last year, I’ve seen an increase in requests from corporate innovation centers for collaboration with startup teams, from the nascent (two kids with a worldchanging idea) to scaling teams delivering solutions that complement what the corporations already deliver.” One large European aerospace manufacturer that traditionally looked to internal teams to deliver truly revolutionary new solutions and business opportunities is now interested in having startup teams sitting alongside employees. The goal is compelling: putting passionate, visionary young talent alongside the corporate teams who know how to convert ideas into scaled solutions. “While we’ve just begun socializing this idea to embed startups into corporate innovation centers around the globe, interest from students, startups and corporate leaders has been very positive,” he said.

In cases where a partnership has not succeeded, Cockayne had a simple answer.

“Timing. I’ve never experienced a partnership where timing wasn’t the cause of problems,” he said. “One Swiss-Silicon Valley corporate lab I worked with runs its innovation programs in six months, start to finish. Partnering with universities, which

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THE TRIPLE HELIX — FROM JAPAN TO THE U.K. For the past few years, Tamara Carleton, Ph.D., has been a visiting professor in design at the Osaka Institute of Technology (OIT) in Japan. This has given her a chance to see more of its work in cutting-edge robotics and other innovation areas. In particular, Carleton says that “OIT faculty, Osaka city managers, and staff at the Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry have been collaborating closely on several initiatives,” including launching an open innovation space called Xport (pronounced ‘cross port’) in 2018. Xport supports the broader Osaka mission to become an innovation ecosystem with an active startup scene. Xport has dedicated space in OIT’s city campus and has about 50-member companies working with student teams and professors.

You can find multiple historical examples of “triple helix” partnerships and variations in a volume of essays which Carleton co-edited almost a decade ago called Sustaining Innovation: Collaboration Models for a Complex World.

For example, one chapter is a case study of the U.K. Technology Strategy Board (TSB). In 2007, the U.K. government set up the Technology Strategy Board with the objective of making the U.K. a global leader in innovation. In 2010, TSB launched a new program to create an open innovation platform that would serve as a “network of networks”. The government provided funding and network support to create TBS as a web-based portal, where users could post innovation challenges, seek experts and partners, and find funding.

A year after the launch, the user base was 20% academics, 18% international and 75% SMEs (SMEs are small and medium-sized enterprises; some groups overlap, adding up to more than 100%). Carleton says that “one major learning for TBS was the importance of a community manager, whose job is to foster partnership health and growth.”

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TRIPL E HEL IX run on academic year and course schedules, becomes almost impossible. Turning to spinoffs, I’ve seen all-too-many sponsored projects fall between the cracks when students head home for the summer, or a regional partner takes extended holidays that kill potential momentum. And timing of funding is a perennial problem whether it’s the need to wait for a grant to open (or be created), trying to get money into a startup while it talks with a partner, or the vagaries of yearly budget planning. The multispeed world we’re experiencing right now is exacerbating this issue.”

Cockayne cites one three-way partnership: Volvo Construction Equipment (CE) is Sweden’s leader within the global construction industry.

Volvo CE has been a long-time partner with the Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) and Stanford University (ME310 course series).

Volvo CE collaborates each year with a joint Sweden-California team of students working on an almost-unimaginable design brief. Three years ago, Volvo CE posed a truly mindbending problem that asked the student teams to rethink the waste generated at construction sites around the globe. After a nine-month collaboration, the Stanford and BTH student teams delivered a potentially world-changing recyclable solution for plastic gloves. (This was before Covid-19 made the single-used plastic gloves an even bigger source of waste.) The Swedish team went on to win The James Dyson Award for its visionary invention.

Since that time, the ReGlove SE team formed a company, built a sustainable business model and is actively speaking with customers and potential corporate research partners in the plastic glove industry. Volvo CE and BTH continue to support the team, which has also gained the support of a regional Swedish government incubator. ReGlove SE is now working with BTH to build the next level solution with the support of government grants.

Tamara Carleton, Ph.D., is the executive director of Stanford’s Silicon Valley Innovation Academy summer program. While teaching in Stanford’s Department of Continuing Studies, she’s also CEO/founder of Innovation Leadership Group, and lead author of the “Playbook for Strategic Foresight and Innovation.” She’s also a research associate at the Foresight & Innovation lab.

“Working with all types of groups — multinationals, government agencies, university labs, startups and more — a crucial lesson is communicating expectations,” she said. “In fact, the same can be said for personal relationships.

While most organizational partners do discuss expectations upfront, some of the critical discussion occurs in private channels, while other parts of the discussion are assumed. Questions such as: What do we really want from each other? What will we give to the shared network?

When can we add another partner? What if a team wants to spin out all or part of the idea?

And so on. Building that clarity and trust early on makes for strong partnerships.”

A second lesson Carleton cites is “to maximize diversity,” which is backed by research on innovation ecosystems.

“Diversity occurs by creating more different combinations — so mixing partners that come from different fields, cultural backgrounds, and such. With more diversity, the broader perspectives your partners can bring to a new opportunity and the greater chances your team can find novel possibilities,” she said.

Carleton is seeing growing interest in mission-oriented research and innovation policy, especially in Europe, which describes taking a systematic view for addressing grand challenges in society. In particular, the teams at Vinnova, Sweden’s national innovation agency, have embraced mission-driven innovation. Carleton notes that she is “part of a growing community focused on moonshots, the pursuit of big ideas with big impact. So as more groups think in terms of innovation missions and moonshots, I feel this will also spur more types of partnerships and, I hope, broader ecosystem sensibility, too.”

Carleton is reminded of the fact that “there are the usual reasons partnerships fall apart, such as poor leadership, changing priorities or unbalanced efforts. Frankly, a good partnership takes commitment to both the outcomes and building the relationship — plus an openness to changing the partnership, as circumstances change.”

Lawrence Livermore: Industry breathes new life into a prototype Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) mission is to make the world a safer place, through the creation and application of advanced science and technologies to real world problems. A large majority of the funding to support that mission comes from the federal government, which invests billions of dollars annually. Combined, the Department of Energy laboratories (DOE) are credited with many successes involving a wide range of research areas, including climate science, advanced manufacturing, materials, biomedical, medical devices, lasers,

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high-performance computing, cyber security, nuclear weapons security and more.

LLNL’s research successes have often been made possible through carefully constructed partnerships with universities and the commercial sector. These have been designed for success — meaning that they aim, from the outset, to benefit each participating party.

LLNL encourages these partnerships in order that it can couple with (and learn from) the very best that academia and industry have to offer. As an institution, LLNL always strives to attract the best research talent and maintain state of the art research facilities and tools. However, no government funded laboratory can conduct enough research or possess enough funding to do the research necessary to be at the forefront of every facet of every technology. Partnering

the U.S. were quickly filling with COVID patients, projections indicated the nation’s total inventory of mechanical ventilators was dangerously low. To address that need, twenty LLNL scientists and engineers assembled an in-house “skunk works” to prototype a simple ventilator design for quick and easy deployment for hospitals in rural or undeveloped areas. They received help from experts in the field, including intensive care unit doctors from the University of California San Francisco, researchers from Colorado State University, associates of Homewood Consulting of Birmingham (Alabama), the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Children’s of Alabama Hospital, as well as the director of pediatric pulmonary medicine at Atrium Health in Charlotte.

spontaneously breathe on their own. While the prototype was achieved, NERVe needed to be refined, scaled and commercialized.

North Carolina-based BioMedInnovations (BMI) stepped forward to fill that need. BMI specializes in machines used for tissue and organ perfusion — devices that help blood and other fluids flow through harvested organs to keep them alive outside the body for transplantation or research. BMI began producing the rebranded SuppleVent ventilators, engaging with potential customers and distributing the machines.

The project also received a boost from the world of motorsports, through BMI’s existing relationships. NASCAR racing teams Roush Yates Manufacturing Solutions (RYMS) and Joe Gibbs Racing build components for the

AT LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY, FROM LEFT: MECHANICAL ENGINEER KEN ENSTROM AND TECHNICIANS GREG NORTON AND AARON SPERRY TESTED AND VALIDATED SIMPLE VENTILATOR PROTOTYPES THAT COULD BE EASILY ASSEMBLED FROM READILY AVAILABLE PARTS. THE EFFORT CAME IN RESPONSE TO A POTENTIAL SURGE IN DEMAND FOR VENTILATORS DUE TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC. | JULIE RUSSELL/LLNL

with outside entities helps keep the laboratory on the cutting edge of technology.

Companies who partner with the LLNL can gain a competitive edge over their competition by leveraging the lab’s world class scientific and engineering talent, unique capabilities and often one-of-a-kind research facilities. Together, the partnership can develop new technologies and new intellectual property that the industry partner can commercialize and bring to the market.

In March of 2020, when hospitals across

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A crude prototype dubbed the “Novel Emergency Response Ventilator” (NERVe), was created in a matter of weeks and contained parts that are not used by commercial ventilator manufacturers, to avoid disrupting already thin supply chains. It met the functional requirements of COVID patients requiring mechanical ventilation, including a simple user interface, air flow circuits for inhalation and exhalation and alarms to notify physicians if air pressures get too low. It could operate in a continuous ventilation mode but could also adapt to patients who

ventilator. Indy Car engine designer Honda Performance Development assisted with testing and engineering expertise.

Designed for portability, the suitcase-sized ventilator has a simple user interface and large LCD display for monitoring pressures and air flow, circuits for inhalation and exhalation that are controlled by highly accurate pressure regulators, and alarms to alert users if pressures fall out of range or if a system failure occurs.

With an FDA emergency use authorization in place, the ventilator team continues

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LONG TERM COMMITMENTS AT TOYOTA Toyota Research Institute (TRI) has partnered extensively with universities, connecting its fundamental research with TRI’s applied research. One key lesson they’ve learned about partnering is that joint projects are far more productive than directed projects. “Instead of identifying a general area of interest and then standing back to watch and learn from the university team, we take a much more collaborative approach. A principal investigator from the university partners with a co-investigator from TRI, and each performs their own tasks and contributes their own deliverables,” said Eric Krotkov, TRI’s Chief Science Officer.

Another key lesson learned at TRI is to, “embrace failure and to view it as learning.” This is important to Krotkov because it encourages, “the risktaking mindset so vital for achieving breakthroughs rather than making incremental progress. It is also important to maintain project velocity, by shaking off the failure and jumping back in with a new approach.”

Krotkov says that another more important lesson which TRI has garnered from their partnerships, “is the importance of the diversity of thought on high-performing industry/university teams. Multiple viewpoints and diverse backgrounds enable teams to challenge conventional wisdom and take novel approaches.”

How and where will these kinds of partnerships change in 2022? Krotkov thinks that getting back together will be key.

“Hopefully, I can begin visiting the universities again in-person … earlier this year, we announced that we expanded our university partners from three to 16. From January 2016 through March 2021, we pushed the boundaries of exploratory research across multiple fields, generating 69 patent applications, nearly 650 papers and three Best Paper awards at top conferences. We sponsored [more than] 98 projects with around 100 faculty members and over 200 students, focusing on important technology advances like transfer learning in computer vision, self-supervised learning on contact-rich tasks and techniques for amplifying human driver performance,” he said.

“In April, we began to push our research even further, with a broader, more diverse set of stakeholders. By investing more than $75 million in the academic institutions over the next five years, we’re making it one of the largest collaborative research programs by an automotive company in the world. We will conduct 35 joint research projects focused on achieving breakthroughs around difficult technological challenges in TRI’s research areas, including human-centered AI, robotics, machine learning, and energy and materials.”

Krotkov is pleased that the Biden Administration has made it clear it backs scientists and support R&D, especially when it comes to one of the biggest challenges we face: climate change.

“This work is critical, if not existential, which is why TRI announced earlier this year that it is committing $36 million to its materials discovery and battery development collaborative university research program over the next four years,” he said. “This investment aims to accelerate the development of new materials for emissions free and carbon neutral vehicles. The faster we can advance our understanding of the battery and fuel cell materials, the faster we will reach a carbon neutral future.”

Some of TRI’s projects have not reached their goals. However, Krotkov said that all the partnerships have succeeded.

“The partners have published hundreds of technical papers,” he said.

“Scores of staff, postdocs and interns have moved from the universities to TRI. A primary reason for this success is that both sides have painstakingly selected and made long-term commitments to the other.”

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MECHANICAL ENGINEER KEN ENSTROM AND TECHNICIANS GREG NORTON AND AARON SPERRY TESTED AND VALIDATED SIMPLE VENTILATOR PROTOTYPES THAT COULD BE EASILY ASSEMBLED FROM READILY AVAILABLE PARTS. THE EFFORT CAME IN RESPONSE TO A POTENTIAL SURGE IN DEMAND FOR VENTILATORS DUE TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC. ORIGINALLY DUBBED THE NOVEL EMERGENCY RESPONSE VENTILATOR (NERVE), ITS DESIGN INCORPORATES COMPONENTS THAT ARE NOT NORMALLY USED IN VENTILATOR MANUFACTURE, TO AVOID DISRUPTING SUPPLY CHAINS FOR VENTILATOR PARTS. | JULIE RUSSELL/LLNL

to improve functions for future iterations and explore new approaches for ventilating patients. The team is also exploring gas exchange techniques, methods for capturing and recirculating expelled oxygen and alternate ways to oxygenate the blood.

“LLNL has been called a business-friendly technology giant that’s open for business. We interact with industry often, and we look to create new relationships. Connecting with industry and communicating with leading edge companies is important to us in accomplishing our mission,” said Richard Rankin, who serves as the director of LLNL’s Innovations and Partnerships Office.

To encourage more industry and academic partnerships, LLNL has now, in conjunction with Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), created the Livermore Valley Open Campus (LVOC) with a more porous boundary to the laboratory. There, industry and academia can more seamlessly access LLNL and SNL capabilities.

Sitting inside LVOC is the High-Performance Computing Innovation Center, which provides a connection to LLNL’s supercomputers, data science and simulation capabilities. LVOC also houses the Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory, where collaborations focus on materials and manufacturing solutions.

Hitachi: More than transactional Most industrial research labs have embraced the idea of an open innovation approach that empowers their researchers to collaborate with academia, national labs and other industrial research labs. Such partnerships provide academics with exposure to industrial-scale problems, real data, and test environments to validate their research. On the other hand, industry gains access to deep, cutting-edge research. For

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the partnership to succeed, each of the participants must commit the time and resources required for tight collaboration. In addition, it’s very important to build longterm relationships between the research organizations through internships, visiting researcher programs, industrial affiliate programs, research consortia, and the like.

Umeshwar Dayal, Ph.D., the Corporate Chief Scientist of Hitachi and the SVP and Senior Fellow of Hitachi America, thinks that in 2022, the focus will be more intensively aimed at addressing the big challenges facing the world: climate change, pandemics, cybercrime, aging infrastructure as well as ensuring equitable access to healthcare, food, clean water and education.

“These will require even tighter collaboration – especially multi-disciplinary collaboration – between academia, industry and government. Rather than solving individual problems in isolation, we will have to tackle these challenges at the systemic level, because they are so interconnected,” he said.

Some are expecting to see a substantial

flow of new federal funds for partnerships from the Biden Administration, Dayal’s team among them.

“Yes, we expect to see more investment in key areas such as AI, automation, clean energy, manufacturing, healthcare, education and infrastructure,” he said. “We hope these investments will favor collaboration between academia, industry and national labs. Also, we expect to see a greater emphasis on policies and guidelines to govern the responsible creation and use of pervasive technologies such as AI, robotics, image processing and others.”

Dayal and his team have concluded that “research partnerships are less successful if, and when, they’re purely transactional.” This occurs whenever academia looks at industry or government merely as sources of funding — or if industrial labs don’t invest the time and effort necessary to collaborate closely on research. Another inhibiting factor is differing expectations from the outcomes of the research.

This is seen when the industrial partners may expect to own the IP resulting from the research but academic partners expect to be able to

publish the results. For the partnership to be successful, these expectations must be aligned from the very beginning.

One recently successful trilateral partnership cited by Dayal is focused on “Responsible AI.” The idea behind it is simple: As AI becomes ubiquitous, Hitachi believes that it becomes important to ensure that AI systems are designed, developed and used responsibly. The U.S. Government, through the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has an initiative to establish and promote technical requirements for trustworthy and responsible AI. Hitachi is working closely with NIST on the underlying R&D associated with solving this problem.

Another successful partnership example offered by Dayal is in renewable energy management. Hitachi considers this to be both a national and a global priority. Through various initiatives, the Department of Energy and California state government agencies (such as the California Energy Commission) are funding research projects with Hitachi that now involve partners from academia, the industry and the U.S. research national labs. &

NexION® 5000 Multi-Quadrupole ICP-MS, PerkinElmer Inc. It’s such a huge honor to have had the NexION® 5000 Multi-Quadrupole ICP-MS be one of the R&D 100 Award winners. The multi-award-winning NexION 5000 ICP-MS is the first of its kind to have four stages of mass resolution. With its state-of-the-art design, it delivers capabilities that meet and exceed the demanding trace-elemental testing needs of biomonitoring, semiconductor, and other applications. There were over 50 people from several departments who helped in the development and the launch of the NexION 5000. It was most definitely a global team effort—there were, of course, folks from R&D, software engineering, technical support, manufacturing, and application support, as well as service engineers, buyers, project and product management and commercialization. We’re immensely proud of our team and the challenges that they were able to overcome to deliver this exceptional product to the market to solve the challenges of today, as well as being forward looking to address the demands of the future.

• 2019 •

2021

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Shimadzu’s HS-20 NX Series Headspace Sampler provides low carryover and reproducibility Shimadzu Scientific Instruments Shimadzu.com

Shimadzu Scientific Instruments HS-20 NX Series Headspace Sampler, replacing the HS-20, uses the isolation gas flow to reduce carryover to onetenth of conventional models. It supports a wide range of chemical species, including high-boilingpoint compounds and high-polar compounds, and provides reliable analytical results. The proprietary isolation gas flow prevents sample diffusion from the vent channel. This reduces carryover of highly adsorptive compounds and eliminates the need for repeating blank runs.

The HS-20 NX Headspace Sampler integrates with Shimadzu’s LabSolutions and GCMSsolution Chromatography Data Systems, which have a variety of functions to ensure compliance with FDA 21 CFR Part 11 and Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare guidelines on electronic records and electronic signatures. It also supports third-party software.

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CRISPR Cas9 Protein reduces offtarget effects for more precise genome editing Thermo Fisher Thermofisher.com For research applications requiring highly precise genome editing, including engineering CAR T cells and creating cellular models for disease discovery, the Invitrogen TrueCut HiFi Cas9 Protein significantly minimizes off-target events while retaining maximum on-target editing efficiency. Thermo Fisher Scientific introduced the new protein to complement its growing portfolio of CRISPR genome editing solutions.

Thermo Fisher’s growing portfolio of genome editing tools also includes the recently redesigned Invitrogen TrueDesign Genome Editor, a free online tool to help scientists easily design their genome editing experiments. The software’s predictive algorithm scores each guide RNA, giving scientists the insights, they need to select the right materials to limit off-target effects and perform a successful edit. The Invitrogen TrueDesign Genome Editor supports experiment types including gene knockouts, fluorescent tagging, insertions, deletions, SNP edits and replacements.

To learn more about the Invitrogen TrueCut HiFi Cas9 Protein, visit www. thermofisher.com/cas9.

For more information on Thermo Fisher’s full CRISPR genome editing portfolio, visit www.thermofisher.com/crispr.

Brand’s accu-jet S pipette controller can sit in ‘rest position’ BrandTech Scientific Brandtech.com The new Brand accu-jet S pipette controller stands alone as a versatile and well-balanced addition to any lab.

It makes lab work simple, easy and efficient, whether it is used for cell culture work, reagent preparation or general pipetting. Adjust power and precision on the fly, with pressure sensitive buttons that smoothly control pipetting speed and achieve precise meniscus control when used with pipettes as small as 0.1 mL. The new well-balanced design features an ergonomic grip for comfortable uninterrupted use, and the integrated rest position allows the controller to be put down without sacrificing the cleanliness or sterility of the serological pipette.

The accu-jet S builds on the highly popular accu-jet pro. Like the accu-jet pro, the new accu-jet S offers extended battery life and can be charged while in use. The new accu-jet S additionally includes the capability to sit in a ‘rest position’ when not in use and enhanced ergonomics for more comfortable pipetting.

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PerkinElmer launches cloud-based solution to enable remote lab management PerkinElmer Perkinelmer.com

PerkinElmer’s PKeye Workflow Monitor is a cloud-based platform enabling laboratory personnel to remotely manage and monitor their PerkinElmer instruments and workflows in real-time.

The PKeye Workflow Monitor offers scientists and researchers 24/7 access and visibility into their laboratory operations. With a cloud-based web design and centralized summary dashboard, authorized users can monitor and view real-time status updates, receive notifications, run completion data and view video clips remotely from their office, a meeting or the comfort of their homes.

The PKeye Workflow Monitor is currently able to facilitate visual monitoring of the PerkinElmer JANUS G3, Sciclone G3 and Zephyr G3 workstations. It is also compatible with the Company’s LabChip GX Touch instrument and the chemagic 360 platform.

Unique ZEISS Mineralogic 3D software for economic and academic geoscience Zeiss Zeiss.com ZEISS’s Mineralogic 3D software for automated quantitative mineralogy achieves increased productivity and efficiency for the mining industry.

By understanding composition, mineral relationships and fabric of the geological materials under scrutiny, including locked grains, miners are able to respond faster to critical production questions.

Built on the ZEISS Xradia 3D X-ray microscope and microCT platforms using ZEISS DeepRecon Pro, ZEISS Mineralogic 3D software incorporates advanced and flexible machine learning protocols that recognize individual particles even when they are in contact with other particles.

Particles are then automatically analyzed individually to provide a series of key outputs such as modal mineralogy, volume, porosity, feret dimensional measurements, associations and liberation.

ZEISS Mineralogic 3D is available for ZEISS Xradia Context microCT or Crystal CT and ZEISS Xradia Versa X-ray microscopes.

It integrates ZEISS DeepRecon Pro for deep learning image processing, and ZEISS ZEN Intellesis for machine learningassisted segmentation.

Also available is ZEISS Mineralogic 2D on ZEISS scanning electron microscope platforms and incorporating EDS detectors.

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Teledyne FLIR expands VS290 Thermal Camera Videoscope Family with two additional kits and probe attachments Teledyne FLIR Teledyneflir.com Teledyne FLIR introduces two additions to its VS290 Thermal Videoscope Kit family of devices — the VS290-33 Thermal MSX Videoscope Kit and the VS2921 Thermal Videoscope Kit. The VS290-33 features a rounded, dual thermal-visible probe for increased flexibility in conducting underground utility-vault inspection and other high-voltage scenarios that require a CAT IV rating. The VS290-21 provides thermal-only building, mechanical and electrical inspection capabilities for hard-to-reach areas from crawlspaces to inside motors for construction and maintenance professionals.

Along with the new VS290 Videoscope Kits, Teledyne FLIR is offering the VSC-IR33 and VSC-IR21 probe attachments as accessories for existing VS290 customers who already have the VS290 kit with the original VSC-IR32 probe with rectangular tip.

The VS290 Videoscope Kits are compatible with FLIR Thermal Studio Suite software for quick report generation along with postprocessing and analysis.

The VS290 Thermal Videoscope Kits and probe accessories are available to purchase today from preferred channel partners and at teledyneflir.com.

Visit the VS290 product page for local pricing and availability.

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Pfannenberg new DTS 34X1C / DTS 36X1C Series Cooling Units offer efficient, spacesaving design

Cloud-based Smart Point Cloud Processing (CSPCP) National Center for High-performance Computing (NCHC) of National Applied Research Laboratories (NARLabs)

Pfannenberg Pfannenbergusa.com

Pfannenberg has released updated 34X1C / DTS 36X1C Series Cooling Units, which offer superior capacity, more efficient design and a robust build to ensure a longer service life of the cooling unit.

The new DTS 34X1C / DTS 36X1C Series Cooling Units are designed to take up less space while delivering greater cooling capacity. These units boast the highest power to cooling ratio available on the market. The DTS 34X1C Units provide 1.5 ton of cooling capacity, while the DTS 36X1C units provide up to 2-ton capacity at normal operation. Both series are designed with the same dimension and mounting cutout, so they can be easily interchanged depending on cooling demand. They are also backwards compatible with Pfannenberg’s older design (DTS 34X1 and DTS 36X1), making them a versatile option for enclosures cooling.

Both these units are suitable for high heat loads, especially high horsepower drive enclosures. They are available in different NEMA or UL Type rating – 12/3R/4/4X and different voltages.

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Cloud-based Smart Point Cloud Processing (CSPCP): The world’s first smart point cloud processing technology through cloud services, which achieved the last mile of auto cleanup for digital models, accelerating developments in digital preservation for cultural heritage, visual production, construction inspection, and craniofacial reconstruction.

Although point clouds have been the trend for many applications, existing point cloud registration software is prone to defects, such as errors in color correspondence, superimposition from residual images of passersby, and light traces, which need to be modified and corrected manually for a better render. Point clouds may contain a large amount of data, which consumes considerable computing resources when it is being processed or corrected. The lack of computing resources and time is the biggest difficulty in managing point clouds.

Taking a point cloud model with 580 million points as an example, the traditional method of point cloud processing and abnormal color correction was performed manually, which is labor intensive, time consuming, and often without adequate fidelity. By incorporating CSPCP, the process that would originally take 6 months to complete can be shortened to 1 month, lowering the cost of hardware, software, and human resources by 97% and boosting the profits by 210%. CSPCP provides opportunities for people in the point cloud industry, leading to innovations and breakthroughs. Clients may overcome the bottleneck of point cloud applications with the help of this technology and contribute to restoring and reusing point clouds. For example, the space and set for films or animations can be created using point clouds that are reusable, instead of physical film sets that go to waste after shooting. Thus, this technology not only helps with the development of the entertainment and education industries but also meets the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations in responsible consumption and production.

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