The 2013 NT4D will include a plenary session, tutorials, workshops, a small business forum, multiple technical sessions, a large poster session, an exhibit show, and multiple networking receptions. A detailed agenda will be posted in the next few months. The following topics will be the focus of this year’s event.
Topic 1: Nano & Bio Print Devices/Nano Manufacturing for R2R Devices
At the core of current defense capabilities is high performance – high cost semiconductor devices. However, system performance relies on the ability to package these devices and other multi-functional components into specific forms with extreme reliability. Emerging flexible (compliant) packaging technology will substantially expand the form-fit-function design-trades for components, but even more importantly will usher new technologies and modularity to provide mission tailorability and reconfigurability. The early stage of development of compliant packaging / flexible electronics technologies affords an unprecedented opportunity to develop fabrication, control and design rules that anticipate recent material and processing innovations in nano-patterning, nano-inks, nanostructured materials, bio-recognition elements, and use of biotechnology.
This topic area will focus on recent developments at the intersection of flexible electronics, printing, embossing and transfer processing techniques with nanomaterials, self-assembly, biomaterials, natural substrates and biorecognition elements toward the goal of lower cost, integrated function devices for defense applications, such as structurally integrated energy, conformal aperture communication, interconnects for extreme mechanical loading, non-destructive inspection for sustainment, portable x-ray detectors for IEDs, and human performance monitoring. Discussion will focus on how the material and supply chain can overcome major hurdles toward transition.
Topic 2: Nano Structural Composites
Exploitation of nanotechnology is seen as providing a step enhancement in aerospace systems performance by developing multifunctional nano structural composites that permit a synergistic combination of properties. Recent property measurements on nanoparticles suggest that nano structural composites can be developed with exceptional mechanical and transport properties that have the potential to revolutionize designs for future aerospace vehicles. However, there are a number of technical and processing challenges that must be overcome before nanofilled composites can achieve their predicted performance of weight savings, fatigue resistance, toughness, and transport properties.
This topic area will focus on the development and implementation of nanoparticles and design concepts for the production of multifunctional enabled structural composites and systems. We are seeking discussions on the challenges in pioneering nanostructures into future aerospace applications and examples of the successful translation of laboratory breakthroughs to robust, cost effective, and manufactured-proven components.
Topic 3: Ultra-high, Ultra-lightweight Strength
The military has a need for new materials that provide ultra-high strength, ultra-low weight, or both properties combined, particularly for new armor and structural materials. Such materials would impact a broad spectrum of military operations and capabilities, ranging from the mundane to the critical. For example, ultra-lightweight armor materials would increase the quantity of vital supplies carried by the Warfighter, enable the rapid delivery of ground vehicles around the world, reduce the demanding logistics of providing fuel and water to the theater, reduce the overall environmental footprint of deployment, and reduce the cost of military operations. The civilian sector would also see disruptive advances in many areas, including energy, oil and gas exploration and production, civil aviation and space, transportation, and construction.
Nanomaterials have offered the promise of ultra-high strength and ultra-light weight, but have yet to deliver on the surrounding hyperbole (e.g. the space elevator), and the nanomaterials research community as a whole has suffered from comparison to such goals. However, nanomaterials’ extremely low weight remains coupled with the very high strength of the carbon-carbon bond and efforts to utilize this benefit now extend from carbon nanotubes into the realm of graphene and hybrids. The goal of this topic area is to explore new research in developing this combination of high strength and low weight into transitionable materials, with a particular emphasis on structural and armor applications, including not only experimental efforts but also theoretical and computational modeling.
Topic 4: Nanotechnology for Applied Energy Storage, Generation, & Conservation
The Department of Defense is a major consumer of energy. It also must deliver that energy to inhospitable locations, in highly integrated performance systems, and as warfighter transportable loads. This topic area addresses the improvements in power generation, storage and conservation required by DoD applications. As examples, the storage and generation of electrical energy involves electron transfer across interfaces. The nanoscale provides means to improve both power and energy density in the batteries, fuel cells and ultracapacitors that are needed for mobile energy storage/delivery. New nanoscale concepts in solar energy conversion – photons to electricity or synfuels – may provide more effective local sources of energy and power. Thermoelectric and piezoelectric phenomena utilizing nano-enabled technology may also provide opportunities for local power. Conversely, methods to minimize energy wastage through friction/wear reduction or to more efficiently convert fuel to power will also require nanoscale technologies.
Topic 5: Optics & Photonics
Optical systems are widely utilized in DoD products to sense and collect information on the surroundings of the warfighter. The intent of this topic area is to focus on improvements in the optical discipline due to research and developments at the nanoscale. Size, weight, and power (SWaP) improvements are a high priority and are focus areas for DoD applications. This topic area includes: improvements in signal-to-noise ratio from optical systems, reduction in size, weight and power requirements of optical systems from the incorporation of nanoscale physics, improvements in thermal performance of optical components, basic material developments for improved optical performance (e.g. powders and nanotubes for optical materials), improved coatings based on work at the nanoscale, optical components, and active & passive photonic devices created by nanostructures (meta devices).
Topic 6: Nanotechnology for Biological Sensing & Biomedical Drug Delivery
Biological sensors and delivery devices are essential components needed to perform chemical and biological (CB) defense, medical diagnostics, and therapeutics. This topic area explores innovative nanotechnology-enabled methods for detection, diagnosis and delivery with potential applications in CB defense and battlefield medicines. Examples of interests include, but are not limited to, design and fabrication of enabling novel nano-structures, nano-scale approaches for biological sensing and diagnosis, and nano-enabled drug delivery systems. Commercially transferable, prototype nano-sensing, and delivery devices and systems are of particular interest.
Topic 7: Materials Synthesis & Scale-up of Nanomaterials to Industrial Scale
Nanomaterials and nano-enabled macro materials have significant potential for improving U.S. national defense capabilities in such diverse areas as improving the hardness and reducing the weight of military platforms through improved structural materials, and reducing energy and maintenance costs of military platforms via improved lubricants and coatings. Applications of nanomaterials or nano-enabled macro materials to defense-related uses has multiple steps and typically includes synthesizing new forms of nanomaterials in the lab for initial demonstration, followed later by the development of industrial production methods. This topic area focuses on innovative lab-scale synthesis methods to build demonstration materials, and the development of industrial production methods.
Additional areas of special interest include:
- Precision Synthesis of Prescribed Carbon Nanotube Structures (e.g. Specific Chiralities, Single-walled/Double-wall CNTS; Defect Free CNTs)
- Industrial Production of High-Grade CNTs
- Functionalization Methods for Carbon Nanotubes or Graphene
- Novel Synthesis Methods for High-Quality Graphene Platelets
- Efficient Exfoliation of Graphene Platelets
- Manufacture of Large Scale Graphene Sheets
- Efficient Production of High-Quality Nanoscale Ceramic Crystalline Grains
- Manufacture of Nanoenabled Macro-materials and Coatings
- Efficient/Practical Methods to Enable Quality Control and Quality Assurance at the Nanoscale.
Topic 8: Next Generation Electronics
In order to maintain a technological advantage over its adversaries, the U.S. military must continually utilize higher performance electronics technology. Key to achieving this next generation of electronics is the development of high-performance, low-dimensional, electronic materials, quantum-effect device operation, and novel computational architectures. This topic area encompasses both the science and technology of this rapidly advancing field.
Areas of interest include:
- Low-dimensional Materials Such as Graphene, etc.
- Highly Correlated Materials (Topological Materials)
- Nanoscale Electronic Devices
- Sensors (Electromagnetic, Chemical, Biological and Radiological)
- NEMS
- Quantum Information
- Novel Architectures
- Bioelectronics
Topic 9: Success Stories
More than a decade after the launch of the National Nanotechnology Initiative and 10 years since the inception of the Nanotechnology for Defense Conference, it is important to focus not just on important research challenges and defense-related motivations for nanotechnology development, but also on examples where nanotechnology has led to key capability enhancements and enabled new technologies. Leaders at all points along the technology research and development pipeline can benefit from hearing examples of successful nanotechnology development. This topic area focuses on the development of new nanotechnology which is either already being used somewhere within DoD or actively under test for incorporation within a defense related system or mission. It will also include discussion of issues encountered during the transition of the technology from the laboratory to the field.
Additional Topics that Will be Considered Include:
- Coatings
- New Materials for Next Generation Sequencing
- Verification & Validation of Computational Modeling
- Nanomaterials Response to Extreme Stimulus
- Nanotechnology Applied to Macromaterials
- Nanomaterials in UAVs
- Multi-functional Materials
- Nanotechnolgy in Special Ops
- Laser Processing for Materials
- Nanomaterials for Energetics
- EM Effects on and in Nanomaterials
- Nanograined Metals & Ceramics
