Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)

For more than 10 years, a partnership between Kazakh and US researchers has led to the synthesis and testing of highly permeable ion-exchangers. These materials possess an increased availability and concentration of active binding groups, and can efficiently extract a wide spectrum of organic and inorganic compounds, pathogenic and toxic substances from water solutions, soils and biological substrata. Currently considered a waste product of the paper manufacturing industry, lignin possesses properties that can be exploited when combined with ion exchange and chelate functional groups. Lignin is a highly abundant, natural plant-based material, allowing the cheap and environmentally friendly manufacture of functionalized ion-exchangers. When combined with Russian-developed ion-exchange, redox-active and chelate functional groups, these lignin polymer materials offer enhanced efficiency, low manufacturing cost, minimal environmental impact over historically used technology based on styrene and divinylbenzene (DVB). In addition to endo- and exo-genic environmental remediation, and industrial applications, the technology offers the possibility of medical applications such as reducing hemo- and entero-toxins in patients.

Infrared spectroscopy is a powerful tool well-recognized as suitable for use in a variety of applications including cell biology, drug discovery, chemical composition analysis and material analysis. However, IR spectromicroscopy detection is limited by the signal-to-noise ratio achievable in a given IR spectromicroscopy system, while the main noise contribution in Mid-IR spectromicroscopy is thermal radiation background. It would be beneficial to provide new systems, methods, and/or computer program products enabling infrared spectromicroscopy such that, particularly in the mid-IR and far-spectral regions, single-photon sensitive Mid-IR spectromicroscopy techniques can be employed to minimize radiational load on the system and permit mid-IR and far-IR emission study of small and/or delicate samples such as living cells, small biomolecules, etc. Potentially, a single molecular detection can be achieved.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), operated by the Lawrence Livermore National Security (LLNS), LLC under contract no. DE-AC52-07NA27344 (Contract 44) with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is offering the opportunity to license a new portfolio of multi-layer dielectric gratings technology to further research and develop for commercialization.

Diffraction gratings are important optical components with a periodic structure which splits, diffracts and disperses light into several beams traveling in different directions. The directions of these beams depend on the spacing of the grating and the wavelength of the light. Diffraction gratings find optical applications in spectrometers, spectral multiplexers and demultiplexers and in monochromators.

 At LLNL large area diffraction gratings have been produced with high laser induced damage threshold (LIDT) for both high-energy pulse compression and high-average power Spectral Beam Combining (SBC) applications. Scientists at the lab have developed large area multi-layer dielectric (MLD) grating fabrication techniques well suited for high-energy pulse and high average power laser applications.

LLNL has developed several MLD grating technologies that extend the state of the art in overall laser optical power handling capability. LLNL’s MLD grating optics are the convolution of the following key technologies:

 

• Optical coating designs utilizing >100 thin film layers - enables ultra-low-loss, ppm transmission levels through the coating, high diffraction efficiency, and large bandwidth.
• Dispersive surface relief structure design - perfectly impedance matched to the thin film stack for optimum optical performance.
• Ability to fabricate dispersive surface relief structure and advanced optical thin film coating on superior thermally conductive materials such as silicon and silicon carbide.
• Processing techniques permitting the fabrication of optimum optical design.

Diffraction gratings are important optical components with a periodic structure which splits, diffracts and disperses light into several beams traveling in different directions. The directions of these beams depend on the spacing of the grating and the wavelength of the light. Diffraction gratings find optical applications in spectrometers, spectral multiplexers and demultiplexers and in monochromators. At LLNL large area diffraction gratings have been produced with high laser induced damage threshold (LIDT) for both high-energy pulse compression and high-average power Spectral Beam Combining (SBC) applications. Scientists at the lab have developed large area multi-layer dielectric (MLD) grating fabrication techniques well suited for high-energy pulse and high average power laser applications.

A common result of head injury, which leads to complications and sometimes to death, is blood and cerebral fluid pooling between the skull and the brain. Victims of blood pooling, or hematomas, can go for hours or days without presenting clear symptoms of the developing hematoma, yet coma and eventually disability or death can result from the pressure on the brain or brain stem. There is also a ten times greater chance that a head injury victim with a hematoma will die if surgery is delayed by more than 4 hours, but currently expensive, non-portable Computed Tomography (CT) or Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans are the diagnostic tools. Portable intracranial hematoma detectors would offer medical personnel a tool to use immediately at the scene of an injury, in the ER, in urgent care facilities, or in home healthcare settings. Such detectors could help triage accident victims by facilitating the rapid determination of the extent of cranial injuries. Also, the screening by the detector could reduce the need for CT scans, minimizing unnecessary exposure to x-ray radiation. In addition, such detectors could also provide a convenient means to monitor the growth of a hematoma. The use of this device could decrease health care costs and improve patient outcomes associated with testing and treating cranial injuries. Earlier detection could potentially reduce the costs of patient rehabilitation and convalescence and reduce the morbidity resulting from current treatment time delays.

With the growth in mobile devices, the Internet of Things and new electronics connecting formerly-isolated systems to the Internet comes new and rapidly evolving cybersecurity risks. Security professionals now consider protecting their systems against not only bad actors from outside the trusted network but also against malicious or incautious insiders and supply chains with potentially counterfeit parts. Currently, many electronic technologies are secured using encryption. Verification that a device can be used typically is performed by authenticating the user using passwords, biometrics or similar solutions. However, user verification protections have proven compromises, and the device components may themselves be compromised. Current solutions usually increasing the time and effort needed to develop and perform a compromise – essentially trusting that a bad actor won’t have or use the resources necessary to break the security. Security is usually layered according to risk, with more valuable systems generally secured with multiple layers of increasing security. However, “bad actors” with sufficient dedication, time, and resources have been known to compromise even systems deemed very secure. LLNL’s Intrinsic Use Control (IUC) technology significantly enhances the security of electronic devices and components within the device. The technology is designed to protect electronics against not only the outsider with malicious intent but also the knowledgeable, skilled, privileged insider with malicious intent. The IUC system can add more layers of security to existing competitive solutions and can significantly increase the time and effort required to compromise an IUC-secured system.

A large percentage of the 8 million urinary tract infections (UTI’s) that occur each year in the U.S. are caused by E. coli. Increasingly, these bacteria-driven UTI’s are resistant to available antibiotics and lead to severe complications. Some studies have indicated that patients could be contracting UTI’s through consumption of tainted meat and produce http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/can-e-coli-in-supermarket-meat... http://news.ubc.ca/2015/02/04/antibiotic-resistant-e-coli-detected-on-va...). The 2014 WHO release Antimicrobial Resistance: Global Report on Surveillance observed that fluoroquinolones were ineffective in more than half of patients with UTI’s caused by E. coli. Early and specific identification of drug resistant E. coli is thus critical in formulating effective patient treatment plans. Patient treatments can be delayed due to lengthy pathogen identification techniques. Detection of a suspected pathogen is currently performed using urine cultures microscopy, leukocyte esterase and tests. These tests can take 1-2 days to complete and require microbiological lab facilities. Simple (CLIA-waved) molecular diagnostics for bedside testing can significantly reduce time to treatment.

The performance of many ultra-low noise electronic devices such as SQUIDs, photon detectors, single-electron transistors or Q-bits is often limited by non-thermal noise of unknown origin. It is generally believed that this noise and decoherence in Q-bits is caused by the presence of low energy states in materials, often referred as two-level systems, while “fluctuators “ would be more appropriate term. These localized objects can undergo translational changes , like change of coordinates or spatial distribution (like atom “jumping” in between two close quasi-equilibrium positions or localized electrons), or orientational changes (rotators, like spins of localized electrons or nuclear spins). Fluctuators have different channels to interact with each other and to interfere with device operation.

Use of dogs (K-9s) are one of the best methods for detecting explosives. To affectively use dogs, scent training is required to recognize targets routinely. The effectiveness of the ability to detect derives directly from training. Training aids (materials that resemble explosives) are key to this. Dogs are trained on objects that have low concentrations of explosives, called training aids. These aids must be high fidelity and not have volatile contaminants because K-9s are easily trained improperly on contaminants. K-9 training aids for explosives are commercially available but there are few real manufacturers. Although the training aids are not considered hazardous materials, production is limited to few that can handle and manipulate raw explosive materials. Because of the nature of the production of the aids, they come in limited forms and shapes (mostly powders or pastes). They are generally mixed with inert substances but the selection is limited because of manufacturing methods, volatiles and interferents from the matrix. Additive manufacturing is a recently developed approach to making materials that differs from other synthesis methods such as mixing and curing, melt casting, and pressing. The technique allows production of objects with unique properties. Objects are formed by layering slurries that have modified flow properties. The technique has great flexibility to produce objects in wide variety of shapes, sizes and compositions that have not previous been accessible. Recently, technical developments have been made that allow the printing of high concentrations of explosives mixed with matrices. This technology now has been applied to producing K-9 training aids for explosives to overcome the issues of currently available training aids—target explosives are limited, substrates to hold the explosives are limited, shape variation of the aids is highly limited. Type of traditional explosive can be addressed (PETN, RDX, TNT, etc.), but also improvised explosives formulations (oxidizer and fuel) can be made because layered structures (by way of AM methods) keep oxidizer and fuels separate but in the same part (without reaction). Construction of any shape or size (dog bone to cell phone case or bigger) is also possible. Wide variety of matrices available (more realistic for training)—essentially anything that can be printed by AM methodology. As with traditional methods, the aids are made safe to transport and handle as non-hazardous materials.

One of the major challenges faced by the DHS is the remote detection of radioactive materials that could be used in a nuclear or radiological weapon of mass destruction. Traditional technologies rely on large detectors and proximity imaging (i.e., associating the source location with the location at which count rates are highest). Such techniques are susceptible to local variations in background count rates, and thus have high false-alarm rates or low sensitivity.