Smal Business Innovations A special research and development program for I small businesses is expanding their pam'cipation in aerospace technology development and transfer The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program was L established by Congress in 1982. Its dual objectives were to increase participation of I small businesses in federal high technology research and I development activities, and to stimulate conversion of government-funded research into commercial applications. The program has been eminently successful in attaining both objectives. Pictured in a loborotory environment is o Femtometrics Model 200-1 SAW Moss Microbolonce (foreground) Each technology- developed under the NASA Smoll Business lnnovotion Research progrom. The microbalonce is o highly sensitive generating federal instrument for detecting dust particle concentrotions in cleon rooms, measuring aerosols in the upper atmosphere, or agency that has an monitoring the presence of toxic vopors in industrial environments. extramural R&D budget of more than $100 million annually is obliged to set program. Similarly, NASA/SBIR contracts give small aside one and one-quarter percent of those funds for businesses an opportunity to hone their SBIR projects. There are 11 such agencies, each developmental skills and expand their technological administering its own program independently under capabilities. policy guidelines set by the Small Business There is another beneficiary: the U.S. economy, Administration. which benefits from the jobs created and the NASA's SBIR program has been particularly contributions to the nation's Gross National Product successful, both for NASA and the nearly 800 small that result when an SBIR project generates a spinoff businesses involved. The program provides NASA an commercial application. In NASA's SBIR program, additional source - beyond traditional aerospace spinoffs have resulted in about one of every three companies - of R&D talent and innovative thought. projects completed. Hundreds of new systems and components that A NASA/SBIR project starts with a proposal by advance NASA's capability for aerospace research the small business, in response to NASA's annual and operations have emerged from the SBIR solicitation, for development of a novel idea or concept. The agency evaluates the proposal from the standpoint of potential usefulness to NASA and the potential for becoming a commercial product or process. The best concepts are rewarded with six- month Phase I contracts for up to $50,000, under which the company determines the technical feasibility of the innovation it has proposed. Phase I1 contracts are awarded competitively from proposals - submitted by Phase I contractors - that include the results of Phase I research; about half of the Phase I projects continue into Phase 11, which can run as long as two years and be funded up to $500,000. In Phase 111, the small business participant may apply the results of Phase 1/11 research to development of a product or process for the commercial market, using private capital to do so. Phase I11 may also involve NASA's continued development and purchase for its own use of the products of Phase I1 - but NASA may not use SBIR set-aside funds for such purposes. A NASA/SBIR project conducted by Femtometrics, Costa Mesa, California illustrates how a company conceived and developed an advanced instrument for government research, then adapted the same technology to creation of a commercial technology," an instrument of extreme sensitivity due Shown above is the product of importance in the industrial workplace. to use of a new type of sensor, the surface acoustic fingernoikize sensor Since 1979, Langley Research Center has been wave (SAW) piezoelectric crystal. It offers a mass unit located in the using a NASA-developed instrument known as the resolution two orders of magnitude greater than the cylinder atop the QCM (short for quartz crystal microbalance cascade crystal in the QCM. instrument; it is impactor) for collection and measurement of aerosol Femtometrics used the technology to develop a octually two seporote particles in the upper atmosphere. The system commercial product, the Model 200-1 SAW Mass crystals, one the active detects aerosols - tiny solid particles or liquid Microbalance, which provides a 400-fold increase in sensor, the other a droplets - that collect on the quartz crystal, mass sensitivity per unit area over the conventional reference. segregates them in 10 size categories and weighs bulk crystal microbalance. The instrument can be them, providing information to environmental used for real-time particle monitoring in clean rooms. researchers on the size distribution and mass It also has utility in measurement of chemical vapors concentration of aerosols in the atmosphere. in very low concentrations; the SAW crystal is coated Femtometrics responded to NASA's SBIR with a t hch emical film that reacts with and detects solicitation with a proposal for an advanced, much the particular vapor. This provides a means of more sensitive aerosol detector to meet a perceived measuring target chemicals in the stratosphere that need for measurement of extremely low are of interest to environmental researchers because concentrations of aerosols and detection of sub- of the key roles of these chemicals in climate and micron particles in clean rooms where aerospace stratospheric chemical composition. The same systems are assembled. The proposal won technology enables detection of toxic chemicals in Femtometrics a Langley Research Center Phase I the industrial environment; the small size, low cost SBIR contract and the results led to Phase I1 and hlgh sensitivity of the Model 200-1 SAW Mass development of the instrument. Microbalance makes the instrument attractive for use The resulting product is described as "the next as an industrial toxic vapor monitor. generation of aerosol mass microbalance (Continued) Ross-Hime Designs, Inc. developed the Omni-Wrist robotic arm with humonlike dexterity and greoter- than-human range of motion. Prologue S dBus iness lmvatkns (Continued) Since 1983, when develop a linear detector NASA initiated its SBIR array for satellite program, the agency has imaging applications. sponsored more than The array employs 1,500 Phase I projects indium-gallium-arsenide handled by 765 alloys and can operate companies; by mid-1331, at room temperature; 632 of those projects had earlier detectors have to proceeded into Phase I1 be cooled to extremely with 377 firms low (cryogenic) participating. temperatures and that is NASA has obligated both difficult and a total of $348 million expensive. for SBIR contracts, which Epitaxx used the are managed by NASA same technology to field installations as part create a series of of their overall R&D commercial products, activities. Nearly 300 including the Epitaxx Phase I1 projects have Near Infrared Room been completed and Temperature Indium- roughly half of the Gallium-Arsenide innovations produced have been used in NASA Photodetectors. The basic device is a photodetector programs or are planned for use. The bottom line, that provides an electrical signal when it is exposed from the standpoint of economic benefit, is that to a scene that radiates energy in the near infrared. It about a third of the completed projects have has applications as a laboratory tool for generating generated commercial applications. optical spectra, and for remote sensing, fiber optic Here are some examples: and laser position-sensing applications. IRoss-Hime Designs, Inc., SBIR work by Epitaxx, Minneapolis, Minnesota Inc. led to commercial developed what development of these company literature calls L high performance "the first successful infrared singularity-free high- photodetecton for precision (robotic) remote sensing, fiber wrist." Singularity is a optics and other phenomenon of robotics applications. that can cause a joint to jam as it attempts to move in an area where it has no axis of rotation or range of motion; singularity can cause damage to equipment or tooling. Products ot SHIR research by Scientitic Materials, Inc. ore these crystal Under a Langley Research Center SBIR contract, components for solid sbte losen. Ross-Hirne developed a commercially available Omni-Wrist" actuator, which has a 25-pound For Kennedy Space Center, General Pneumatics capacity, 180 degrees of pitchlyaw and 360 degrees Corporation, Scottsdale, Arizona developed a special of roll (another version, Omni-Wrist 11, offers a 100- Joule-Thomson UT) expansion valve that is far less pound load capacity and the same range of motion). susceptible to clogging by particles or condensed Applications include spray painting, sealing, contaminants in the flow than are conventional JT ultrasonic testing, welding and a variety of nuclear valves. The company employed the technology in a industry, aerospace and military uses. commercial anti-clogging cryostat that liquefies gases Epitaxx, Inc., Princeton, New Jersey received a by expansion from high pressure through a nozzle to Goddard Space Flight Center SBIR contract to produce cryorefrigeration. The cryostat is combined I employee of lightwove Electronics is holding o Series 122 MISER ring loser, which has applications in fiber sensing, communications and laser radar. General Pneumatics Corporation's participation in a NASA SBIR project resulted in two commerciol products: a nonilogging cryostat (left) to liquefy gases for extremely low temperature cryorefrigeration, and the cryocooler (right) used to generate cryogenic cooling for infrared sensors, superconductors, supercooled electronics and cryosurgery. with the company's non-contaminating compressor An oward-winning in another General Pneumatics commercial product, innovation by Foster- a closed cycle Linde-Hampson cryocooler used to award, could lead to Miller, Inc. is a generate cryogenic cooling for infrared sensors, significantly higher yields technique and a super conductors, supercooled electronics and in the manufacture of system for monitoring cryosurgery. complex composite chemical reactions in Lightwave Electronics Corporation, Mountain parts, with consequent composite moteriols View, California, received an SBIR contract from Jet reduction in cost. It is while they ore Propulsion Laboratory for a Prototype Laser Diode- expected to find broad undergoing cure in a pumped Solid State Transmitter. The company research and commercial press or outoclove. delivered a low noise ring laser with voltage tuning utility in aerospace, that could be used as a local oscillator in an optical industrial and communications system. The voltage tuning feature environmental allows "phase-locking" the lasers, making them applications. "electronic", similar to radio and microwave Scientific Materials Corporation (SM), Bozeman, electronic oscillators. From this technology, Montana, under a Langley SBIR contract, developed Lightwave developed the Series 120 and 122 non- a SciMax" line of improved Nd:YAG crystals for laser planar diode pumped ring lasers for applications in and electro-optic applications (Nd:YAG is short for fiber sensing, coherent communications and laser the materials involved - neodymium, the dopant, radar. with yttrium aluminum garnet). SM's research Foster-Miller, Inc., Waltham, Massachusetts, in provided a process for producing uniform laser rods SBIR cooperation with Langley Research Center, in which the amount of water trapped in the crystal developed the first analytical system capable of during growth is reduced, thereby improving directly measuring the chemistry of advanced efficiency, and the properties that affect optical composite materials. It employs an infrared fiber quality are also improved for a further gain in crystal optic sensor, embedded in the composite material, to efficiency. SM is producing the crystals for the track the molecular vibrational characteristics of a commercial market; applications include fiber optics, composite part while it is being cured in a press or telecommunications, welding, drilling, eye surgery an autoclave. Thus, says a company official, it and medical instrumentation. "provides first hand information about chemical reactions as opposed to measuring a secondary Wmni-Wrist is a trademark of Ross-Hime Designs, Inc. change." The patented In Situ Fiber Optic Polymer "5ciMax is a trademark of Scientific Materials Corporation.