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Instrument accommodates fast rise and fall times of waveforms characteristic of modern, efficient power controllers. Power meter multiplies analog signals proportional to voltage and current, and converts resulting signal to frequency. Two mechanical counters provided: one for charging, one for discharging.
SBV (Single Barrier Varactor) diodes have been proposed as alternatives to Schottky barrier diodes for harmonic multiplier applications. However, these show a higher current than expected. The excess current is due to X valley transport in the barrier. We present experimental results showing that the use of a superlattice barrier and doping spikes in the GaAs depletion regions on either side of the barrier can reduce the excess current and improve the control of the capacitance vs. voltage characteristic. The experimental results consist of data taken from two types of device structures. The first test structure was used to study the performance of AlAs/GaAs superlattice barriers. The wafer was fabricated into 90 micron diameter mesa diodes and the resulting current vs. voltage characteristics were measured. A 10 period superlattice structure with a total thickness of approximately 400 A worked well as an electron barrier. The structure had a current density of about one A/sq cm at one volt at room temperature. The capacitance variation of these structures was small because of the design of the GaAs cladding layers. The second test structure was used to study cladding layer designs. These wafers were InGaAs and InAlAs layers lattice matched to an InP substrate. The layers have n(+) doping spikes near the barrier to increase the zero bias capacitance and control the shape of the capacitance vs. voltage characteristic. These structures have a capacitance ratio of 5:1 and an abrupt change from maximum to minimum capacitance. The measurements were made at 80 K. Based on the information obtained from these two structures, we have designed a structure that combines the low current density barrier with the improved cladding layers. The capacitance and current-voltage characteristics from this structure are presented.
A computer program autonomously manages the calibration of a quadrupole ion mass spectrometer intended for use in monitoring concentrations and changes in concentrations of organic chemicals in the cabin air of the International Space Station. The instrument parameters calibrated include the voltage on a channel electron multiplier, a discriminator threshold, and an ionizer current. Calibration is achieved by analyzing the mass spectrum obtained while sweeping the parameter ranges in a heuristic procedure, developed by mass spectrometer experts, that involves detection of changes in signal trends that humans can easily recognize but cannot necessarily be straightforwardly codified in an algorithm. The procedure includes calculation of signal-to-noise ratios, signal-increase rates, and background-noise-increase rates; finding signal peaks; and identifying peak patterns. The software provides for several recovery-from-error scenarios and error-handling schemes. The software detects trace amounts of contaminant gases in the mass spectrometer and notifies associated command- and-data-handling software to schedule a cleaning. Furthermore, the software autonomously analyzes the mass spectrum to determine whether the parameters of a radio-frequency ramp waveform are set properly so that the peaks of the mass spectrum are at expected locations.
Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is currently entering high-volume manufacturing to enable the continued miniaturization of semiconductor devices. The required EUV light, at 13.5 nm wavelength, is produced in a hot and dense laser-driven tin plasma. The atomic origins of this light are demonstrably poorly understood. Here we calculate detailed tin opacity spectra using the Los Alamos atomic physics suite ATOMIC and validate these calculations with experimental comparisons. Our key finding is that EUV light largely originates from transitions between multiply-excited states, and not from the singly-excited states decaying to the ground state as is the current paradigm. Moreover, we find that transitions between these multiply-excited states also contribute in the same narrow window around 13.5 nm as those originating from singly-excited states, and this striking property holds over a wide range of charge states. We thus reveal the doubly magic behavior of tin and the origins of the EUV light.
The Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at INL measures reactor power through two methods, thermal and Nitrogen-16 (N-16) activity. Water power calculator (WPC) is a thermal power system that measures flow and temperature to determine the thermal quadrant powers. The N-16 system utilizes a beta chamber detector that outputs reactivity levels to calculate lobe power through an algorithm called lobe power calculation and indication system (LPCIS). The LPCIS utilizes the N-16 system and the WPC system to determine reactor core power levels. The WPC provides accurate calculations of quadrant and total reactor thermal power. With the use of WPC measurements, thermal-to-N-16 (T2N) power ratios are produced to determine if the two indication systems agree on core power. Relative magnitude equations are used to utilize N-16 coefficients and multipliers to improve the indications of the LPCIS. This is crucial for maintaining safety limits. Currently, the LPCIS system uses linear equations and matrices to calculate lobe power through multipliers and coefficients. Advancements in technology and system upgrades have assisted system engineers at INL with the objective to reach a more dynamic system. In return the system demonstrates an increase in the accuracy of power reading while maintaining safety margins. The new proposed coefficient and multiple method implements a cycle specific, and a physics-based model intended for changing coefficients during operation. This calibration experiment focuses on power splitting, outer shim and neck shim, as well as fuel burning into the RDAS weighting factors. Results show that the Physics learning method yields a smaller error margin inside of the desired power range for the data set 166-A. This proved true for both constrained and unconstrained testing. This is most likely due to the physics data fitting approach that resulted in favorable coefficients and multipliers for 166-A. Continuing to improve the physics-based model will help improve the power accuracy of the LPCIS system.
Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have enabled a historic increase in the conversion of electric energy to photons, but this is approaching a physical limit. The theoretical maximum efficiency occurs when all input energy is converted to energy in photosynthetic photons. Blue LEDs can be 93% efficient, phosphor-converted “whites” 76% efficient, and red LEDs 81% efficient. These improvements open new opportunities for horticultural lighting. Here we review (1) fundamental physics and efficiency of LEDs, (2) the current efficacy of LEDs, (3) the effect of spectral quality on crop yield, and (4) the potential efficacy of horticultural fixtures. Advances in the conversion of photons to yield can be achieved by optimization of spectral effects on plant morphology, which vary among species. Conversely, spectral effects on photosynthesis are remarkably similar across species, but the conventional definition of photosynthetic photons (400–700 nm) may need to be modified. The upper limit of LED fixture efficacy is determined by the LED package efficacy multiplied by four factors inherent to all fixtures: current droop, thermal droop, driver (power supply) inefficiencies, and optical losses. With current LED technology, the calculations indicate efficacy limits of 3.4 µmol J- 1 for white + red fixtures, and 4.1 µmol J -1 for blue + red fixtures. Adding optical protection from water and high humidity reduces these values by ~10%. We describe tradeoffs between peak efficacy and cost.
Analog-to-digital converter (ADC) circuit designed as part of larger circuit intended to measure root-mean-square current on 20-kHz powerline. Provides digital output of 11 bits of data plus 1-bit overflow signal at sampling rate of 4 MHz. Output processed by multiplying-and-accumulating circuitry to obtain sum of squares and digitized current samples accumulated during preset number of consecutive sampling periods. Used to digitize current samples from ADC directly as alternative or auxiliary output. Notable features include low power and fast conversion.
To meet performance and reliability requirements necessary for broader adoption of electric drive vehicles, the Electrical and Electronics Technical Team of the U.S. Drive partnership has established aggressive design goals for next-generation electric vehicle drivetrains. Specifically, the 2025 roadmap stipulates a 100 kW/L power density target and a $\$$2.7/kW cost target for power electronics, in addition to high-voltage operation (i.e., greater than 800 VDC). The additional targets for traction motor and the overall system performance impose further challenges on the power electronics design. For example, many high specific power machines have reduced iron content, and therefore reduced intrinsic filtering, thus requiring the inverter to supply a low-distortion drive current. These machines also typically have a high pole count, thus requiring drive current at a higher electrical frequency. Other motors, such as brush-less dc and switch reluctance machines, require a carefully-shaped, non-sinusoidal drive current (Yang, Shang, Brown, & Krishnamurthy, 2015), (Zhang, Bowman, O'Connel, & Haran, 2018), (Anderson, et al., 2018). Two- and three-level inverter topologies are the conventional framework for the power electronics design of the drivetrain, and some demonstrations have shown recent progress towards addressing cost, power density and efficiency goals (Gurpinar & Ozpineci, 2018), (Zhu, Kim, Chen, Erickson, & Maksimović, 2018), (Deshpande, Chen, Narayanasamy, Sathyanarayanan, & Luo, 2018), (Alizadeh, et al., 2019). However, an unconventional approach may be necessary to take the dramatic leap in power density necessitated by the roadmap—while simultaneously addressing the other system needs. Therefore, this project leverages the flying capacitor multilevel (FCML) topology, together with a scalable, modular approach, to address these needs. This type of hybrid converter has several advantages: lower voltage (i.e., less than 300 V) transistors can be used, energy-dense capacitors process most of the power, and the output current waveform is multilevel and exhibits a frequency multiplying effect—in other words, the output has reduced dv/dt and filtering requirements for the same high voltage dc bus. For example, in an electric vehicle with an 800 V bus, a 10-level FCML could leverage 100 V, commercially available GaN devices switching at 115 kHz to produce a ~1 MHz switching waveform (modulated according to the motor drive requirements) with one ninth of the dv/dt of a two-level converter. Prior work has already demonstrated promising performance and gravimetric power density figures for more electric aircraft applications (Pallo, Foulkes, Modeer, Coday, & Pilawa-Podgurski, 2018). This project leverages lessons learned to achieve the volumetric power density of 100 kW/L by employing advanced liquid cooling, address the 300,000 mile reliability challenge with redundant design, topology failure studies and online health monitoring, and reduce costs to $\$$2.7/kW through the use of low-cost GaN devices, modular converter assemblies, and modest modifications to traditional manufacturing methods. The project involved several hardware designs, each achieving increasing performance. At the conclusion of the project, a volumetric power density of 380 kW/L was achieved, in a 800V dc-ac converter, greatly surpassing even the aggressive target goal.
Circuit is self-biasing, with differential current-to-voltage conversion. CMOS current-differencing readout consists of dc-balanced pair of virtual ground stages and current-differencing circuit similar to circuit mirror. Triode multiplier cell replaces test sources to form monolithic configuration. Transistors belonging to selected multiplier cell need to be duplicated for each multiplier within correlator chip. Remaining elements form part of readout and may be scaled as single common readout stage.
The calibration standards used in the Atmospheric Lifetime Experiment (ALE) for CFCl3, CF2Cl2, CH3CCl3, and CCl4 are described. This includes the preparation of the primary standards by static dilution and their propagation and stability for the period 1977-1982. Two independent assessments of the absolute concentrations of the primary standards used to initiate the ALE measurements in 1977-1978 are reported. For consistency in the ALE program the values assigned to the primary standards and subsequent working standards used in the field were not altered during the experiment when results of better estimates of the original concentration values were obtained. Rather, the appropriate factors by which the ALE mixing ratios for a given species should be multiplied to obtain the best estimate of the current concentration of a given species, are provided.
Successful ground truth support of U-2 overflights was been accomplished. Data have been reduced for 4 June 1984 and some of the results have been integrated into some of MSFC's efforts. Staccato lightning (multiply branched, single stroke flash with no continuing current) is prevalent within the rainfree region around the main storm updraft and this is believed to be important, i.e., staccato flashes might be an important indicator of severe storm electrification. Results from data analysis from two stations appear to indicate that charge center heights can be estimated from a combination of intercept data with data from the fixed laboratory at NSSL. An excellent data base has been provided for determining the sight errors and efficiency of NSSL's LLP system. Cloud structures, observable in a low radar reflectivity region and on a scale smaller than is currently resolved by radar, which appear to be related to electrical activity are studied.
During the Single String Integration Test of the NASA HiVHAc Hall thruster, a number of plasma diagnostics were implemented to study the effect of varying facility background pressure on thruster operation. These diagnostics include thrust stand, Faraday probe, ExB probe, and retarding potential analyzer. The test results indicated a rise in thrust and discharge current with background pressure. There was also a decrease in ion energy per charge, an increase in multiply-charged species production, a decrease in plume divergence, and a decrease in ion beam current with increasing background pressure. A simplified ingestion model was applied to determine the maximum acceptable background pressure for thrust measurement. The maximum acceptable ingestion percentage was found to be around 1%. Examination of the diagnostics results suggest the ionization and acceleration zones of the thruster were shifting upstream with increasing background pressure.
A high frequency, multiple output power conditioner was developed and breadboarded using an eight-stage capacitor diode voltage multiplier to provide +1200 Vdc, and a three-stage for -350 Vdc. In addition, two rectifier bridges were capacitively coupled to the eight-stage multiplier to obtain 0.5 and 0.65 a dc constant current outputs referenced to +1200 Vdc. Total power was 120 watts, with an overall efficiency of 85 percent at the 80 kHz operating frequency. All outputs were regulated to three percent or better, with complete short circuit protection. The power conditioner component weight and efficiency were compared to the equivalent four outputs of the 10 kHz conditioner for the 8 cm ion engine. Weight reduction for the four outputs was 557 grams; extrapolated in the same ratio to all nine outputs, it would be 1100 to 1400 grams.
Thin sheets of resistive or dielectric material are commonly encountered in radar cross section calculations. Analysis of such sheets is simplified by using sheet impedances. It is shown that sheet impedances can be modeled easily and accurately using Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) methods. These sheets are characterized by a discontinuity in the tangential magnetic field on either side of the sheet but no discontinuity in tangential electric field. This continuity, or single valued behavior of the electric field, allows the sheet current to be expressed in terms of an impedance multiplying this electric field.
The design of the Mars Ascent Vehicle - Mars Sample Return (MAV-MSR) trajectories requires an accurate assessment of flight performance. Typically, these trajectories are developed by flight mechanics analysis to meet complex mission requirements and then flight performance assessed through Monte Carlo simulations. Consequently, it is crucial to develop an aerodynamic aerodatabase as an input model for flight mechanics analysis to provide static and dynamic force and moment coefficients under specific flight conditions. The force and moment coefficients in the MAV aerodatabase are determined using the FUN3D computational fluid dynamics solver. Firstly, an overview of the aerodatabase is presented to demonstrate its applicability to trajectory-defined simulations. This effort is followed by an initial attempt to quantify uncertainties in the force and moment coefficients necessary for updating the current aerodatabase. The uncertainty model identifies uncertainty adders and multipliers for coefficient-based forces and moments through a direct comparison between FUN3D and wind tunnel test data from NASA Marshall Space Center's 14x14 inch Trisonic Wind Tunnel. These uncertainties aim to encompass various changes in Mach number, angle of attack, and aerodynamic roll angle.
The design of the Mars Ascent Vehicle - Mars Sample Return (MAV-MSR) trajectories requires an accurate assessment of flight performance. Typically, these trajectories are developed by flight mechanics analysis to meet complex mission requirements and then flight performance assessed through Monte Carlo simulations. Consequently, it is crucial to develop an aerodynamic aerodatabase as an input model for flight mechanics analysis to provide static and dynamic force and moment coefficients under specific flight conditions. The force and moment coefficients in the MAV aerodatabase are determined using the FUN3D computational fluid dynamics solver. Firstly, an overview of the aerodatabase is presented to demonstrate its applicability to trajectory-defined simulations. This effort is followed by an initial attempt to quantify uncertainties in the force and moment coefficients necessary for updating the current aerodatabase. The uncertainty model identifies uncertainty adders and multipliers for coefficient-based forces and moments through a direct comparison between FUN3D and wind tunnel test data from NASA Marshall Space Center's 14x14 inch Trisonic Wind Tunnel. These uncertainties aim to encompass various changes in Mach number, angle of attack, and aerodynamic roll angle.
The Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at INL measures reactor power through various methods, two of them being thermal and Nitrogen-16 (N-16) activity. Water power calculator (WPC) is a thermal power system that measures flow and temperature to determine thermal quadrant powers. The N-16 system utilizes a beta detector that outputs Nitrogen activation levels to calculate lobe power through an algorithm called Lobe Power Calculation and Indication system (LPCIS). The LPCIS utilizes the N-16 system and the WPC system to determine reactor core power levels. The WPC provides accurate calculations of quadrant and total reactor thermal power. With the use of WPC measurements, thermal-to-N-16 (T2N) power ratios are produced to determine if the two indication systems agree on core power. Relative magnitude equations are used to utilize N-16 coefficients and multipliers to improve the indications of the LPCIS. These correct indications are crucial for maintaining safety limits because operators rely on this information for decision making. Currently, the LPCIS system uses linear equations and matrices to calculate lobe power through multipliers and coefficients. Advancements in technology and system upgrades have increased the accuracy of power readings by making the system more dynamic. The new proposed coefficient and multiplier method implements a cycle specific and physics-based model intended for changing coefficients during operation. This calibration experiment focused on power splitting, outer shim and neck shim, as well as fuel burning into the reactor digital acquisition system (RDAS) weighting factors. Results demonstrated that the physics learning method yields a smaller error margin inside of the desired power range for the data set 166-A. Continuing to improve the physics-based model will help improve the power accuracy of the LPCIS system.
Investigation into the uses of step-recovery diodes /SRD's/ leads to the development of necessary circuitry for using fast current-switching capabilities of SRD's in frequency multiplication, the design of solid-state X-band transmitters employing SRD multipliers, and the use of SRD multipliers in a phased-array receiving antenna.