NASA SBIR 2014 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
QorTek, Inc.
1965 Lycoming Creek Road, Suite 205
Williamsport, PA 17701 - 1251
(570) 322-2700

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Ross W Bird
rbird@qortek.com
1965 Lycoming Creek Road, Suite 205
Williamsport, PA 17701 - 1251
(570) 322-2700

CORPORATE/BUSINESS OFFICIAL (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Cathy Bower
cbrooke@qortek.com
1965 Lycoming Creek Road, Suite 205
Williamsport, PA 17701 - 1251
(570) 322-2700

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 2
End: 4

Technology Available (TAV) Subtopics
Power Electronics and Management, and Energy Storage is a Technology Available (TAV) subtopic that includes NASA Intellectual Property (IP). Do you plan to use the NASA IP under the award?
No

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
The goal of the Phase I effort is to design, develop and demonstrate a novel solid-state ceramic-based voltage isolator and demonstrate its potential to provide a highly radiation tolerant digital voltage isolation solution applicable to a wide range of NASA mission requirements. The related design success QorTek has will lead to development in Phase I of a completely new gate drive technology with many advantages and benefits to the entire spectrum of NASA and commercial applications. The Phase I design goals are focused primarily on early COMSOL Multiphysics based Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of the proposed ceramic device, as well as electrical circuit design and SPICE modeling of a high-side MOSFET gate driver system incorporating the new ceramic isolator. This preliminary development early in the program will enable the main objective of Phase I which is to fabricate initial isolator ceramic-based gate driver prototypes and undertake basic electrical test characterization of their performance. An all-inclusive electrical design targeted to isolated MOSFET gate driver applications will also be developed as a functional demonstration platform prototype. The purpose of the Phase I prototypes is to demonstrate, through hardware functional testing and device characterization, that the ceramic gate driver technology provides a feasible size and performance equivalent replacement for similar COTS non-rad hard isolation solutions.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
There are many NASA missions requiring digital isolator/signal transmission and gate driver devices such as deep space applications involving orbiters and landers that require data isolation circuits to block noise as well as level shifting interfaces for digital to analog formats. These will also be critical to Heliophysics and Earth observations mission. Moreover, future NASA space missions will need to be smaller, lighter, and cheaper (and possibly unheated) spacecraft.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Commercial applications include systems involving error-free data transmission at high speed. Any system that currently uses optocouplers could also benefit from this replacement. These systems include industrial power supplies and regulation systems, electric motor control and drive systems, and instrumentation and medical systems. Other areas of application will be in integrated high temperature Wide Band Gap gate driver applications.