R&D 100: Oscars of Innovation
Scientific researchers, technology transfer professionals, entrepreneurs and visionary business professionals create the stories of technology commercialization success. Along the way to success awards are won for technology transfer efforts. Since 1978 LLNL has been winning R&D 100 Awards—the “Oscars of Innovation”. Winners each year represent the most revolutionary technologies recently recognized by the market.
Versatile Cold Spray (VCS) outperforms other cold spray and additive manufacturing techniques by depositing both ductile and brittle materials to any substrate of any shape without adhesives. The unique VCS nozzle and feed system preserves the functional qualities of brittle materials such as semiconductors, including thermoelectrics, and magnets, achieving a coating with greater than 99% density. The streamlined, portable, low-cost VCS design enables high-density, functional coatings in place, providing a viable pathway to creating energy-harvesting thermoelectric generators from heat-emitting industrial components of any form factor. These thermoelectric generators present an elegant solution—with no moving parts or chemicals—to begin to capture the 13 quadrillion BTUs of energy lost to waste heat each year from U. S. industrial operations. The Livermore/TTEC team that developed VCS has demonstrated its effectiveness inbuilding a thermoelectric generator as well as its capability to apply magnetic coatings, creating permanent magnets inside motor housing or generator parts, and insulating materials, an important component of energy harvesting and storage devices.
The IMPEDE® Embolization Plug is a permanently implanted vascular occlusion medical device featuring fast, easy deployment with low radial force and high vessel conformability. It combines a novel biodegradable shape memory polymer (SMP) foam with a radiopaque markerband and anchor coil for positioning, rapid clotting, and integrated healing response.
See video for demonstration of IMPEDE Embolization Plug device
The MC-15 detects neutrons to within 100-nanosecond resolution, enabling emergency response teams to quickly identify and assess nuclear-based threats. The MC-15 processes data in real time, requires little training to operate, and is portable, lighter, and faster than any neutron multiplicity detector on the market.
The Scalable Checkpoint/Restart Framework 2.0 (SCR) enables high performance computing simulations to take advantage of hierarchical storage systems, without complex code modifications. With SCR, scientific simulations’ input/output performance can be improved by orders of magnitude, with their results produced in significantly less time than they could be with traditional methods.
Spack is an open source software package management tool for scientific computing. It simplifies and accelerates building, installing, and customizing complex software stacks. Spack unifies software deployment for laptops, clusters, and supercomputers, enabling a community of thousands of users to share and leverage over 3,200 scientific software packages.