NASA SBIR 2015 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)
A critical element in the NASA/NRC Technology Roadmap is to develop Power Electronic Building Block (PEBB) devices that can function in Extreme Environments. NASA?s stated aim is to use high power density/high efficiency PEBB devices to streamline design and introduce size, weight, cost and efficiency savings. The formidable challenge is to design such PEBB devices that use materials that can function in Extreme Environment conditions. The proposed high power density/high efficiency PEBB solution employs ceramics, striction materials and wide bandgap semiconductors as to meet these Extreme Environment operation challenges. This design eliminates transformer magnetics and opto-isolators (required for galvanic isolation) and eliminates external circuits and components as to provide lower complexity, enhanced performance, and much higher SWaP specifications than currently available. These ?smart? PEBBs incorporating new design and novel materials can now provide NASA design engineers with a whole new level of self-monitoring capabilities as to include voltage, current and temperature self-sensing at the device junction level. These will enable robust prognostics, power reconfiguration, and advanced control methods to be rapidly developed and tested.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Extreme Environment Power Electronic Building Block (EE-PEBB) devices are applicable to deep space applications such as orbiters, landers, Heliophysics and earth observation platforms. QorTek?s new integrated sensing EE-PEBB devices are also an ideal solution for NASA missions such as inter-planetary probes, outer planetary exploration and deep space probes for use potentially down to cryogenic temperatures, as well as high temperatures Venus Integrated Weather Sensor (VIWS) or high radiation environment Van Allen belts or Europa. The planned design incorporates packaging in a modular formfactor that lends itself to new and existing platforms with seamless integration. The inherently radhard nature of sensors and WBG switches introduces further advantages for such missions, as they will reduce risks associated with harsh space environment installations. It would directly impact the ability to reduce the requirements for radioisotope heating units (RHUs) to maintain higher operating temperatures of the electronics and radiation shielding for the current technology.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Applications include ruggedized, high-temperature switching devices for electric vehicle (EV) applications and high temperature sustainable power electronics for down hole gas exploration. The EE-PEBB will be a smaller/less expensive solution than typical piecemeal power electronics circuits. All existing commercial applications would require external circuitry to condition both the input (gate drive) and output (sensor data) signals and in most cases isolate them. QorTek?s system will include all of the necessary circuitry in one modular package. QorTek plans to utilize its ongoing relationship with CREE to further facilitate commercializing a high temperature variant of the proposed technology specifically for emerging Green technology applications. EE-PEBBs can replace IGBTs and MOSTFETS in industrial communication applications including power conversion systems, inverter systems, power supplies, electric motor drive, and medical systems such as MRI machines are a few potential applications.