Fall 2010 Newsletter - ices.cmu.edu · Fall 2010 Newsletter. biodiesel fuel potential. Thank you for taking the time to review the Fall 2010 . edition of the PITA newsletter. In these

Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance

A Commonwealth-University-Industry Partnership for Economic Development through Research, Technology, and Education.

A PITA-funded collaboration between Lehigh Universityand Allentown, PA-based company MOR Supercriticalis working to make biodiesel fuel more viable economically.

Fall 2010 Newsletter

biodiesel fuel potential

Thank you for taking the time to review the Fall 2010 edition of the PITA newsletter. In these lean economic times, the continued PITA funding provided in this 2011 fiscal year has had even greater significance by enabling new PA technology research and industry collaborations critical to future economic growth. For this, we would like to thank the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the Governor for mak-ing PITA a priority of the Commonwealth and continuing to support this program. At this time, PITA FY2009 research projects are conclud-ing and FY2010 projects are well underway at both Lehigh University and Carnegie Mellon University. We have incor-porated stories from projects associated with these fiscal years into this version of the newsletter. The feature story of the fall edition highlights the col-laborative effort between Lehigh University and a PA-based company called MOR Supercritical to develop a low-cost/high-profit biodiesel fuel production process. This process converts agricultural waste oils and greases into biodiesel fuel and would make biodiesel fuel more viable economically. Shifting away from an energy-focused project towards an innovative infrastructure technology-based project, also high-lighted is an ongoing partnership between Carnegie Mellon University faculty members and WavesInSolids. PITA funding has allowed these partners to improve acoustic testing devices that are used commercially to monitor the health of such critical infrastructures. Another highlighted project involves a Lehigh University Electrical and Computer Engineering researcher working with Teledyne Judson Technologies, a leading commercial sup-

plier of a range of discrete infrared detectors, to improve infra-structure security technologies. Together, they are develop-ing better high-resolution cameras for both commercial and defense applications. Yet another research opportunity has led Carnegie Mellon University Materials Science and Engineering and Robotics Institute professors to join forces with Crystalplex Corpora-tion to develop a marketable LED-quantum dot device that promises to exceed the color quality and efficiency of current LED lighting technology. As well as the aforementioned projects that are geared towards developing new technologies that can enhance the economic position of partnering PA companies, PITA has also helped to support the development and retention of the state’s future technologically advanced workforce. Lehigh University continues its efforts to inspire school-children’s interests in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (S.T.E.M.) through a collaboration with the Na-tional Science Foundation S.T.E.M. project, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and several Lehigh Valley based compa-nies to develop a new NASA Space Center at one of the local middle schools. Carnegie Mellon University also reports that Mario Berges – a recent CMU graduate student whose research on sensed critical infrastructures was funded in part by PITA – has chosen to stay in PA and continue his research profession-ally as an assistant professor at CMU. Please feel free to contact us if you would like more infor-mation about the projects described here or if you would like more information about becoming involved with PITA.

message from pita co-directors

gary fedder & richard sause

PITA Co-Director Gary K. [email protected] | 412-268-8443/5352(ICES) Institute for Complex Engineered SystemsCarnegie Mellon University

PITA Co-Director Richard [email protected] | 610-758-3525ATLSS Engineering Research CenterLehigh University

Biodiesel has the potential to be the fuel of the future and is currently gaining commercial and general recognition as such. It is a clean burning alternative fuel that derives from 100% renewable resources, and because it can be used in its unaltered form in diesel engines, it is one of the easiest alternative fuels to use. It is bio-degradable and non-toxic, causing

no harmful effects to the environment and has passed the re-quirements of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, as well as being registered with the Environmental Protection Agency. In addition, biodiesel is good for the economy because unlike traditional fuels, the resources to make biodiesel come from within the United States, including the Pennsylvania agricultural community. Despite this potential, however, it still costs slightly more than traditional fuels. Recognizing the potential of biodiesel fuel, the PITA-funded collaboration between Lehigh University and Al-lentown, PA-based company MOR Supercritical is working to make biodiesel fuel more viable economically. They are developing a low cost and high profit biodiesel production process that converts agricultural waste oils and greases into biodiesel fuel.

Biodiesel is made through a process called transesterifica-tion, a reaction that removes the biodiesel and glycerol from the vegetable oil or fat. The research team at Lehigh led by Chemical Engineering Professor Tsai-An (James) Hsu is working with MOR Supercritical – which develops tech-nologies specifically for the ethanol industry – to develop a process based on using heterogeneous catalysts to create a transesterification reaction. To be economically viable and to compete commercially with petroleum-based diesel fuel, processes for the syntheses of biodiesel need to involve continuous processing in a flow system, have as few reaction steps as possible, limit the num-ber of separation processes, and ideally use robust solid cata-lyst. The process being developed in this research uses solid acid catalysts, such as ion exchange resins, for the reaction and is working toward having the ability to easily incorporate these catalysts into a packed bed continuous flow reactor, simplifying product separation and purification and reduction of waste generation. Beyond directly impacting the production being done at MOR Supercritical, this research collaboration supported by PITA ultimately benefits the Pennsylvania agriculture and energy industries and builds a strong position for Lehigh University at the forefront of biofuel engineering research and education.

for more information, please contact: Dr. Tsai-An (James) Hsu at [email protected]

pita-supported research develops biodiesel fuel potential

For decades, Judson Technologies, a small company located near Lansdale, PA, has been a leading commercial supplier of a wide range of discrete infrared detectors. With the acquisition by Teledyne Technologies at the beginning of 2008, Teledyne Judson Technologies is embarking on an ambitious plan to expand its personnel and its facilities in Pennsylvania and develop high-resolution infrared cameras for both commercial and defense applications, such as residential energy auditors and night-vision goggles. With partial funding support by PITA, Lehigh University professor James Hwang is leading a project focused on the de-velopment of a 1280x1024 high-resolution detector array with 10-micron or smaller pixels for these infrared cameras. The detector material is based on InGaAs, which is a compound semiconductor sensitive to infrared wavelengths between 0.9 to 1.7 microns. InGaAs – grown by IQE, a multinational cor-poration with a major operation in Bethlehem, PA – is fabri-cated into detector arrays by Judson. Lehigh has been helping to design, model and characterize the arrays, and together, Le-high, Judson and IQE will be optimizing the starting material and fabrication process for the best camera performance. One of the recent achievements of the project is the devel-opment of a novel yet convenient technique to precisely

monitor and control the pixel size of the detector array. As the pixel size decreases below 10 μm, the difference between the photolithography mask size and the actual pixel size becomes critical. In InGaAs detectors, this difference is mainly caused by lateral diffusion of the zinc dopants. While the vertical diffu-sion depth can be inferred from secondary-ion mass spectros-copy, the lateral diffusion width has been difficult to determine. The novel technique developed with this project is based on probing individual pixels in an array and analyzing the para-sitic bipolar transistor formed between them to determine the lateral diffusion width, hence, the actual pixel size. The actual pixel size can then be used to separate the area-dependent dark current from the periphery-dependent dark current. The result shows that in the present arrays, the dark current is dominated by the periphery current, unless the pixels are so close that they effectively touch each other. This electrical measurement technique can be conveniently implemented during fabrica-tion to monitor and control the pixel size.

controlling pixel size improves infrared camera technology

for more information, please contact: Dr. James Hwang at [email protected]

Schematic cross section of an array of InGaAs infrared detectors in

which the p+ region of each pixel is formed by Zn diffusion through SiN

windows on top of an InP substrate. The formation of a parasitic p-n-p

bipolar transistor is also shown.

Infrared image showing where heat escapes

out of a typical residence.

Since the summer of 2003, a team of Lehigh University faculty representing STEM (science, technology, engineering, and technology) disciplines from the colleges of Engineering, Arts and Sciences, and Education received multiple National Science Foundation (NSF) STEM grants designed to advance K-20 STEM education and research. The first grant focused on curriculum development by creating teams of faculty, teachers and students that composed and disseminated inter-active coursework in STEM fields. The second and current grant project refocused the goals on graduate student commu-nication, developing a model that utilizes graduate students, university faculty, and K-12 teachers to enhance and assess the graduate student fellow’s skills. Furthermore, in collaboration with the NSF STEM project, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA GSFC), PITA and several local companies, a new NASA Space Center was constructed and recently opened at one of the local middle schools. The facility includes a Mars Yard Lab with specially built robots (as shown in the picture below right) and a Mission Control Center, designed to facilitate curriculum development, teacher training, and research at the undergraduate and graduate student levels. To the best of our knowledge, this NASA Space Center is one of only two such centers at this level in the country.

These efforts are producing a diverse group of scientists and engineers who are now working for industry, the military, and serving as faculty members in Pennsylvania institutions of higher education; increasing the students pursuing under-graduate and graduate degrees; better preparing teachers at the K-12 levels; and increasing university/agencies/industry col-laboration designed to sustain the broader economic impact for a skilled future workforce. In addition to the involvement of Lehigh University, Lehigh’s PITA project, the NSF GK-12 Graduate Fellows and NSF ITEST programs, and the NASA GSFC, several local companies are contributing financially and in-kind, including Air Products and Chemicals, Alvin H. Butz, Inc., PPL, Rober-son Butz Architects, Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Com-merce, PQ Energy, and Lutron Electronics Company, Inc.

for more information, please contact: Dr. Henry Odi at [email protected]

partnerships advance k-20 stem education & research

at lehigh university

for more information, please contact:Robert Davis at [email protected]

Lee Weiss at [email protected]

“Before receiving funding,” Dr. Robert Davis recalls,“all we had were quantum dots and an idea.” PITA fund-ing has allowed Carnegie Mellon professors Davis and Lee Weiss to partner with Crystalplex Corporation to work on developing a marketable LED-quantum dot device that promises to exceed the color quality and efficiency of cur-rent lighting technology. In the last several years, solid-state lighting has be-come an economically viable alternative for industrial and consumer lighting and for LCD display backlight-ing. The combined market opportunity is estimated to be from $3.5 - $4.5 billion annually. White LEDs based on semiconductor nanocrystal quantum dot emission – the kind which Drs. Davis, Weiss and their graduate students Lauren Jackson and Michael Schmitt have been working with – hold the promise of overcoming the limitations of current LED manufacturing processes. Having worked previously with Crystalplex Corp., Davis was aware of the company’s desire to further their quantum dot technology. Crystalplex – a company headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA that provides fluorescent nanoparticle technology to the biomedical research, mo-lecular diagnostic and pathology markets – had developed their TriLite™ quantum dots and was hoping to incorpo-rate its quantum dots into current LED designs and create a marketable device.

The goal of this collaboration was for Dr. Weiss, a Robotics Institute research professor, to develop an inkjet-based process for printing TriLite quantum dots di-rectly on the surface of LED wafers fabricated by Dr. Da-vis, a Materials Science and Engineering professor, and to demonstrate the capability of producing marketable white light LEDs. The challenges with this process lie in pro-ducing a periodic array of closely spaced quantum dots on an LED wafer that allows for interaction among the dots and produces maximum emission, without spacing them too closely so they absorb each other’s light. Also, they faced the challenge of protecting this dot coating from environmental factors like oxygen and humidity that will cause them to lose their photo-luminescent quality. As a result of their collaboration, Crystalplex – un-der the direction of CEO and President Matt Bootman and Chief Technical Officer Lianhua Qu – is developing methods for distributing quantum dots in a matrix mate-rial from which light of various colors can be emitted. The immediate applications for this research include producing chromatographically-correct white light LEDs for LCD display backlighting in televisions and computer monitors. However, the longer-term applications of this technology are numerous and include biomedical applica-tions – for example, for tissue penetration of the emitted light to allow detection and imaging of defective biologi-cal structures – and solar cell technology applications.

carnegie mellon - crystalplex collaboration advances led technology

PITA Co-Director Richard [email protected] | 610-758-3525ATLSS Engineering Research CenterLehigh University

Critical civil infrastructure components, such as steel bridges, pipelines, and pressure vessels, require periodic inspections because they contain flaws that can approach critical fracture sizes during use. Some fatigue cracks will be stable, while others will advance and potentially lead to col-lapse. Evidence of these cracks and failures is made known by acoustic emissions – transient ultrasonic disturbances released from a microscopic zone, such as a crack tip, during irrevers-ible damage, such as a crack extension.

WavesInSolids, a company based in State College, PA, develops new technologies for nondestructive evaluation and provides inspection services, among them acoustic emis-sion testing, for the railroad, petrochemical, oil and natural gas, defense, aerospace, power generation and marine indus-tries. Thanks to PITA seed funding, WavesInSolids, along with other local companies, have been able to partner with CMU engineering researchers to improve acoustic testing devices that are used commercially to monitor the health of such critical infrastructures. They have collaborated with Professor Irving J. Oppenheim (Architecture and Civil and Environmental Engineering) and Professor David W. Greve (Electrical and Computer Engineering), who have worked with their graduate students since 2002 to build, test, and improve micro-electro-mechanical (MEMS) based acoustic emission devices.

PITA funding provided Oppenheim and Greve with the initial seed funding to build these devices; the financial support to collaborate with companies like WavesInSolids in order to field test these devices; and the ability to generate funding from the National Science Foundation to continue the work. WavesInSolids provided the research team with invaluable insights into acoustic emission testing. The system works as such: the source of the problem (a crack or fracture) sends out an acoustic emission wave that is

detected by a sensor. The sensor then sends a signal to the acoustic emission instrument which can not only detect, but also measure, record, interpret, and evaluate the data it receives. By testing and rebuilding their devices, Oppenheim and Greve have been able to improve upon the sensitivity of the sensor device and study its ability to engage in multi-axis sensing. With earlier PITA support the research team used a similar MEMS technology to construct CMUTs (capacitive microma-chined ultrasonic transducers) in a phased array of tiny trans-ducers for an elementary demonstration of ultrasonic imaging. By supporting university-industry partnerships like this one, PITA provides opportunities to further infrastructure monitoring technology, gives local companies the chance to test and use it, and ultimately, improves the inspection abilities of the state’s infrastructure.

for more information, please contact:Irving Oppenheim at [email protected]

David Greve at [email protected]

pita funding furthers development of infrastructure monitoring devices

“Being at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has been a very rewarding experience. There is a continuous stream of interesting challenges and great people to work with in order to address these challenges,” says Mario Berges, a CMU assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and recent College of Engineering graduate. The support of PITA funding in the beginning years of Berges’ doctoral program at CMU helped give his advisors, Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Lucio Soibel-man and H. Scott Matthews, the ability to fund his doctoral research. As a Ph.D. student, Berges’ work focused primarily on developing a framework for enabling detailed energy-awareness in buildings through minimally-intrusive approach-es. Soibelmen says of the PITA funding: “this seed money al-lowed the research project to obtain subsequent funding from Robert Bosch LLC to develop the first prototype and funding from the National Science Foundation.”

Now Berges calls Soibelman and Matthews his colleagues, and together, they continue to find solutions to critical infra-structure problems in Pennsylvania and beyond. As a CMU faculty member, “I am more generally interested in instru-menting our civil infrastructure to increase its resilience, adap-tiveness, and self-monitoring capabilities,” describes Berges. Mario explains that “the projects I have been involved with have drawn the attention of local companies. For exam-ple, I have been working closely with the Robert Bosch LLC Research and Technology Center, and my research has assisted in instrumenting the assisted living homes that McKeesport-based company Blueroof Technologies provides.” More generally, though, Berges believes that “the research I am doing has an impact on the way we, in general, use and think about energy consumption in buildings.”

for more information, please contact: Mario Berges at [email protected]

pita-funded student continues research as cmu professor

ICES, 1201 Hamburg HallCarnegie Mellon UniversityPittsburgh, PA 15213-3890

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