Technology Transfer-NASA's Commercial Invention of the Year

NASA’s Commercial Invention of the Year

When cast as large thin films, a space age thermoplastic material hailed as a breakthrough in solar propulsion and power also serves exceptionally well as solar thermal concentrators for space-based propulsion and power concepts and, potentially, for inflatable large space antennas. The thermoplastic material has remarkable qualities of transparency, ultraviolet resistance and operating temperatures and has been selected as the NASA 1999 Commercial Invention of the Year.

Commercially, the invention may be applied to many products, such as ultraviolet-resistant protective coatings for art and outdoor statues, ultraviolet-resistant additives for cosmetics and exterior paints, and components in flexible printed circuit boards and in liquid crystal displays.

The space age thermoplastic has good solar energy characteristics, is resistant to the environmental extremes of space and is lightweight, simple and economical for space launches. (Photo supplied by Langley Research Center)

A research team from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, developed the winning invention, which is called Colorless and Low Dielectric Polyimide Thin Film Technology. The team will be honored at a NASA Headquarters ceremony, where team members will receive an award check and certificate.

R&D Magazine also selected the invention as one of the top 100 research and development products for 1999. The technology has been licensed to SRS Technologies, Huntsville, Alabama, and Triton Systems Inc., Chelmsford, Massachusetts.

The NASA research team developed the thermoplastic technology–actually two similar polyimide chemical compounds–in a successful effort to improve on the solar energy absorption and reflectance of existing space-based systems. Either compound can take the form of a highly transparent and nearly colorless thin film, which has good solar energy characteristics, is resistant to the environmental extremes of space and is lightweight, simple and economical for space launch applications.

The polyimides are optically transparent at 400- to 900-nanometer wavelengths, which represents a great improvement over currently available commercial products. Other features include thermal stability from —100 degrees Celsius to 300 degrees Celsius, a dielectric constant of 2.77 to 2.80 at 1 gigahertz and outstanding resistance to electron, proton and ultraviolet radiation. Films 0.0025 to 0.25 millimeters thick can be produced up to 152 centimeters wide.

Benefits to the end user can be dramatic. SRS Technologies has developed fabrication processes to cast precise thin film segments for use as power augmentation panels for a satellite manufacturer. These processes promise to increase the power production of the satellite’s standard photovoltaic arrays. Future aerospace applications may include use in optics for space telescopes or spaceborne lasers, antennas for communications, surveillance and positioning, solar shielding, solar sails, and aircraft and missile cabling.

Microgravity Research Grants Announced

Sixty-five researchers have been selected by NASA to conduct microgravity materials science research on Earth and in space. Sponsored by NASA’s Office of Life and Microgravity Science and Applications, this research offers investigators the opportunity to use a low-gravity environment to enhance the understanding of fundamental physical and chemical processes associated with materials science. Researchers will use NASA’s microgravity research facilities, such as drop tubes, drop towers and aircraft flying parabolic trajectories, with the flight-definition investigators working toward experiments on space flight test beds such as the International Space Station and Space Shuttle.

The grants will total approximately $22 million over four years. Sixty of the grants are to conduct ground-based research, while the remaining five are flight-definition efforts. Twenty-two grants are for the continuation of work currently being funded by NASA, while the remaining 43 represent new research efforts.

NASA received 232 proposals in response to this research announcement. These proposals were all peer-reviewed by scientific and technical experts from academia, government and industry. In addition, those proposals selected for flight definition were reviewed in terms of engineering feasibility by a team from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

For more information, contact Dr. Michael Wargo at NASA Headquarters. 202/358-0822, mwargo@hq.nasa.gov Please mention you read about it in Innovation.

For more information please contact Greg Manuel at Langley Research Center. 757/864-3864, g.s.manuel@larc.nasa.gov Please mention you read about it in Innovation.