NANOHMICS INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A20-022

Description

To ensure the safety of military personnel, equipment, and installations there is a need to maintain a clear IR transmission band for friendly use while blocking a large swath of other IR wavelengths. In recent years, researchers have studied a series of nanomaterials that exhibit this type of transmission/attenuation behavior, which is typically achieved using nanoparticles with multiple resonances or collections of nanoparticles that exhibit multiple resonances. While all these nanomaterials have demonstrated promising optical performance—large-scale and low-cost production, aerosolization, and operation in the broad IR wavelength regime still pose multiple technical challenges. Preliminary experiments and theoretical modeling performed by Nanohmics, Inc. reveal that a readily available oxide is a very promising material with narrowband transmissive and broadband attenuation for practical applications in solution and air due to the Christiansen effect. Nanohmics proposes to develop microstructures of this type of oxide doped with a transition-metal to achieve a narrow band of transmission in the longwave IR within a broadband attenuation in the IR region and to demonstrate a scalable process for manufacturing.