LUNA INNOVATIONS INCORPORATED — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A19-055

Description

There is a significant need to improve the IR attenuation performance of military obscurants and advanced nanostructures could fulfill this demand. Very few types of commercially available obscurant materials perform well in the IR waveband. Recent numerical simulation has shown that highly conductive materials with a one dimensional nanostructure should exhibit excellent IR obscuration when their structural size is reduced to nanoscale dimensions. Luna Innovations will develop a novel low cost synthesis approach to produce highly conductive single-wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) structures with desired dimensional parameters for high FIR obscurant applications. The high quality SWCNTs will be produced in large scale from environmentally responsible and low cost precursors by using a demonstrated synthesis method. By using novel catalysts and additives, the electrical properties and dimensional parameters will be well controlled. Produced materials will be evaluated for their obscuration performance over target IR bands and the most promising ones will be scaled up for U.S. Army evaluation.