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.
HELD Gratings, a novel design of multi-layer dielectric pulse compression gratings, enables a new class of high-energy, 10 PW ultrafast laser systems for extremely high and unprecedented peak power. Meter-scale HELD Gratings have the potential to facilitate future 100 PW-class ultrafast laser systems.
Energy Inks meet 3D printing material flow conditions while optimizing functional properties of the extruded material, requirements difficult to obtain simultaneously. Such functional inks enable the design of customizable, easily integrated components, and, therefore, next-generation high-performance energy devices including those not possible to produce using current methods.
Tailored Glass by DIW augments Direct Ink Writing additive manufacturing to print silica-based optics and glass components with customizable forms and spatially varying material properties. Flow of multiple glass-forming inks is finely controlled to achieve the desired structure and optical properties. Subsequent heat treatment renders a dense, transparent glass product.
Flux is a next-generation workload management software framework for high-performance computing (HPC). It combines fully hierarchical resource management with graph-based scheduling to improve the performance, portability, flexibility, and manageability of scheduling and execution of complex scientific workflows on HPC systems both at the system and user level.
The Multiplicity Counter for Thermal and Fast Neutrons (MC-TF) is a field-deployable device that first responders can use to quickly assess in real-time and with high confidence the threat level posed by a suspected nuclear weapon. The MC-TF is designed to detect time-correlated fast and thermal neutrons unique to special nuclear material (SNM); the core of a nuclear weapon.
The Optical Transconductance Varistor (OTV) is a light-triggered semiconductor power switch enabling higher switching speeds than competitors at previously unattainable voltages to facilitate more efficient grid-scale power conversion, reduce expensive, environmentally-damaging energy losses, and generate the voltages required for medical proton therapy or air disinfection.