Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and engineers have earned four awards among the top 100 inventions worldwide.
The trade journal R&D World Magazine recently announced the winners of the awards, often called the "Oscars of innovation," recognizing new commercial products, technologies and materials that are available for sale or license for their technological significance.
With this year's results, the Laboratory has now collected a total of 186 R&D 100 awards since 1978. Submitted through LLNL's Innovation and Partnerships Office (IPO), these awards recognize the impact that Livermore innovation, in collaboration with industry partners, can have on the U.S. economy as well as globally. They will be showcased at the 63rd R&D 100 black-tie awards gala on Nov. 20 in Scottsdale, Arizona.
This year's LLNL R&D 100 awards include robust telescopes for the environment beyond earth's atmosphere, an x-ray diagnostic for studying rapid phase changes in materials at very high temperature and pressure, a groundbreaking microcapsule production tool and a high-precision additive manufacturing platform for scaled-up production of 3D nano-architectures.
"It's wonderful to see four LLNL teams recognized by the R&D 100 awards, which highlight the most innovative, game-changing technologies," Lab Director Kim Budil said. "These four projects showcase how we create partnerships - working with industry, government and academia - to create impactful solutions for a wide range of important challenges."
Monolithic Telescopes
LLNL's monolithic telescopes address a need for robust, high-performance telescopes in space, an unforgiving environment for instruments onboard space missions. The challenging conditions include high-acceleration launch loads, radiation environments and rapidly varying temperatures from solar exposure.
The technology uses monolithic optics, which remain permanently aligned by combining all lens and mirror elements into one solid optic to increase overall mechanical stability and reduce potential points of failure. As the optic is composed of fused silica, its performance is largely unaffected by temperature changes; making it able to endure solar radiation without risking thermal distortions.
Monolithic telescopes offer the functionality of conventional reflective telescopes without the alignment issues that such telescopes face in space environments. And unlike conventional telescopes, the monolithic optic prescription can be tailored to meet a range of mission requirements. For example, infrared and ultraviolet telescopes crafted using this approach can be housed in the same mount design as a visible-band telescope.
Monolithic telescopes have already been flown on demonstration missions with NASA, the U.S. Space Force and commercial partner, Terran Orbital. LLNL is developing monolithic telescopes for upcoming missions in collaborations with Firefly Aerospace and Optimax Space Systems.
Monolithic telescopes were developed by an LLNL team of researchers led by Space Program Leader Ben Bahney, Associate Program Leader for Space Hardware John Ganino and Space Program Leader Brian Bauman. Principal investigators (PI) also include Frank Ravizza, Willem De Vries, Jordan Smilo, Shawn Higbee and Alex Pertica.
Time-Resolved Diffraction for NIF
Flexible Imaging Diffraction Diagnostic for Laser Experiments (FIDDLE) is a cutting-edge x-ray imaging diagnostic for the National Ignition Facility used to study rapid phase changes in materials at very high temperature and pressure. FIDDLE provides multiple diffraction measurements over the course of a single shot, creating what are effectively "movies" of material phase transitions occurring on nanosecond timescales.
Materials scientists are keen to learn how changes in pressure and temperature can alter the atomic structure, or phase, of solids and liquids. With FIDDLE's unique capabilities, researchers can better study material properties such as strength, compressibility and thermal conductivity with high precision in high-energy environments.
FIDDLE uses ultrafast, hybrid complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor sensors to capture x-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements of targets during laser-driven dynamic compression. By capturing multiple frames of XRD readings (images) per experiment, FIDDLE offers increased data efficiency over competing technologies while reducing the uncertainty introduced between multiple, individual experiments.
The detailed, time-resolved measurements provided by FIDDLE are invaluable to many disciplines: to astrophysics, for instance, when investigating star formation dynamics and the interiors of exoplanets; to geology, concerned with large-scale impact events such as a moon-forming collision; to industrial materials design, looking to maximize material performance in specific settings; to fundamental materials science, studying material phase transitions under extreme conditions; and to national security technologies, particularly, the U.S. Department of Energy's Stockpile Stewardship Program to certify the nuclear stockpile absent underground testing.
In-air Drop Encapsulation Apparatus (IDEA)
Microcapsules tailored for maximum effectiveness are in demand for applications like pharmaceutical delivery and sustainable manufacturing. LLNL's In-air Drop Encapsulation Apparatus (IDEA) is a groundbreaking capsule production tool that bridges the gap between industry limitations and application needs.
Traditional manufacturing techniques of tailored microcapsules fail to meet yield requirements, create inconsistently sized capsules and waste significant amounts of materials. IDEA offers a scalable solution using diverse, high-performance polymers - enabling encapsulation of reactive or bioactive core solutions at unmatched rates.
Designed to overcome the bottleneck of material availability, IDEA makes lab-developed microcapsules commercially viable. Its success has propelled advancements in bio, energy and many other applications. IDEA is also engineered to significantly minimize waste generation, enhancing the economic and environmental advantages of microencapsulation.
What sets IDEA apart is its ability to produce capsules without relying on a liquid-form continuous phase, while preserving the liquid core essential for modern applications. This unique capability surpasses conventional industrial production techniques, positioning IDEA as a transformative tool in the field.
IDEA was developed by an LLNL team led by PI Congwang Ye and co-developed by Purdue University.
MetaLitho3D: Metaoptics-enabled Large-scale 3D Nanolithography
MetaLitho3D is a one-of-a-kind, high-precision additive manufacturing platform that addresses the limitations of conventional optical systems when scaling up the production rate of 3D nano-architectures to perform wafer-scale, two-photon lithography.
The technology uses over 100,000 high-contrast metalenses and a spatial light modulator to generate a large and tunable focal spot array. This enables the rapid parallel production of complex nano-devices at high resolutions - up to 110 nm, the highest-resolution 3D printing method in existence today. The platform enhances 3D nanofabrication rates by 1,000 times with seamless stitching and a reduction in errors.
MetaLitho3D presents a paradigm shift of 3D nanolithography from laboratory prototyping to wafer-scale manufacturing and fundamentally changes the way 3D nanolithography is performed in current commercial solutions. It enables high-volume production of nanostructures with applications including microelectronics, architected materials, energy, biomedicine and information technologies.
In principle, the fabrication throughput of MetaLitho3D is limitless due to its scaling mechanism, which uses larger metalenses with higher performances. With advancements in supporting technologies such as optical modulators, high-energy lasers and large-scale metalenses, MetaLitho3D could further improve fabrication capacity.
MetaLitho3D team was developed by a team of LLNL researchers led by PIs Xiaoxing Xia and Songyun Gu and co-developed by Stanford University.
