Structure-Property Correlations and Phase Transitions

Containerless Research, Inc., (CRI)

Evanston, IL

Work focused on the liquids formed during processing of semiconductor materials

Regarding properties of semiconductor liquids, research provides insight into their liquid structure, solidification pathways, and tendencies for glass formation and metastability

• Work has resulted in refinement of techniques to study deeply undercooled liquids coupled to x-ray sources. As a result of work performed early in the project, the apparatus and technology to perform these difficult measurements have been refined, leading to expanded research and investigations into a wide array of difficult and complex liquid systems with the aid of x-ray diffraction.
• Research applied an apparatus for maintaining liquids under containerless conditions at extremely high temperatures. It achieves liquid structure and property measurements under conditions that (a) the liquid is not contaminated by the inevitable reaction with container materials that would otherwise occur, and (b) under deeply undercooled conditions in which the liquid is retained at temperatures far below the melting point.
• Various technical papers have been published on subject research.

• Company has developed and sold custom versions of the apparatus (prior to current NASA project) as a niche product to University of Bristol, Great Britain, and to Argonne National Laboratory.
• Niche market apparatus sales total $325,000

• Research has been sponsored by the Microgravity Research Office, and provides data on liquids important to the wide range of materials research performed on liquids sponsored by that office.
• In earlier work, company measured spectral emissivities of liquids that were processed under containerless conditions in space-based experiments so that the true temperatures of the liquids could be determined from the apparent temperatures that were measured by radiation pyrometry during the experiments.

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