ACCELERATOR 2007 Projects

TRECC ACCELERATOR 2007 award recipients are involved in the development and deployment of technologies key to the fields of defense, health, nanotechnology, and industrial fabrication. Learn more about these groundbreaking emerging technologies that could provide crucial solutions to critical needs.

AVIO
Professor Yangyang Zhou, PhD

AVIO is focused on bug detection and resolution in concurrent application programs.

Multi-threading has become a common industry technique for applications program development as well as operating systems. However, developing multi-threaded programs is difficult. Concurrency introduces the possibility of errors that do not exist in sequential programs. Furthermore, multi-threaded programs may behave differently from one to another because threads are scheduled indeterminately. For most systems, the number of possible schedules is enormous and testing the systems behavior for each possible schedule is infeasible. Specialized techniques are needed to insure that multi-threaded programs do not have concurrency-related errors. So, there is a need to detect and fix atomicity issues or violation bugs.

AVIO is based on a novel observation of concurrent program’s execution invariance. It can automatically learn the programmer’s assumption about the atomicity of certain code regions based on access inter-leaving invariance analysis, and detect violations to these assumptions (invariants) at run time. This can be done with no prior knowledge of the software.

Intel Corporation is in discussion with the UIUC OTM to license this technology.

An Electrochemical Deposition Platform for the Fabrication of a Variety of Nanostructures
Professor Min-Feng Yu, PhD

Due to the versatility of electrochemistry for plating and surface finishing of a wide range of materials, the principle of electrochemistry has been pursued and applied to the fabrication of various metallic nanostructures. There are two principal deposition techniques for micro and nano structures and the template-based deposition technique for nanostructures.

The traditional probe-based electrochemical deposition method has the following limitations:
a. Structures that are produced are usually porous and have feature
sizes in the tens of micrometers.
b. Sharp conductive probe and a substrate are submerged in an electrolyte plating bath. This can be an issue when the devices cannot be exposed to an ionic solution.

The template-based deposition technique is capable of making nanostructures. However, it is incapable of creating complex three-dimensional nanostructures. This invention provides a method to form complex nanostructures in free space at any surface location.

Currently, the free-standing nanowires being formed are made with copper or platinum. A prototype has been developed which demonstrates the use of the invention for the fabrication of freestanding metallic nanowires.

Ultra-low Thermal Conductivity Insulation
Professor Alan Feinerman, PhD

A critical need exists for compact ultra-low thermal conductivity insulation to minimize heat flow to conserve energy in structures, or to enable military personnel to survive extreme temperatures for longer periods of time. The dominant flow of heat in structures is through thermal conduction, and windows, even thermopanes, are usually responsible for the greatest heat loss or load on a structure. A transparent vacuum insulation panel (VIP) has the potential to reduce the thermal conductive component of heat flow across it by one to two orders of magnitude. The method of fabricating the transparent VIP can be applied to create an opaque VIP for use in other situations requiring ultra-low thermal conductivity insulation.

The outcome of the project will be the creation of a transparent VIP which will reduce the heat load through windows by a factor of ~100 when compared to a single cavity thermopane. The VIP technology will also be developed for creating opaque VIPs which can be used to insulate existing structures, as well as situations where non-toxic insulation is needed at extremely high temperatures.

Go to Accelerator Home page.

Contact: Jonas Talandis 630-578-4225

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