This program supports basic and applied research on materials and device technologies for Navy applications that generate, detect and suppress undersea signal for navigation, threat detection, weapons guidance, communication and the like. The R&D emphasis is on the exploration, processing, production, and characterization of novel materials and devices that enable transformative capabilities of undersea transducers.
Research Concentration Areas
The program’s basic research goal is to develop material concepts that allow efficient signal conversion between energy forms (electrical, mechanical, magnetic, optical, etc.). Piezoelectric materials, which lie at the heart of most Naval acoustic transducers, are the primary focus of the program but other materials based on novel transduction mechanisms are also of interest. Potential research concepts are not limited to new material compositions. The combination of intrinsic properties and extrinsic structure to form hybrid/heterogeneous materials with novel topology is also an acceptable approach. Potential research areas include, but are not limited to:
- Compositional and topological optimization of materials
- Improvement of transduction efficiency
- Fundamental understanding of transduction phenomena and mechanisms
- Innovative processing techniques
- Computational approach for accelerated material discovery
- Rapid property characterization of complex electroactive materials
- Physics-based material and device performance prediction
The applied research projects will focus on developing and validating advanced manufacturing processes that allow mass production of novel materials. The effort will be coordinated with applications-focused programs to fabricate, evaluate and insert high performance transducers into deployed systems for the fleet. Potential research areas include:
- Transition of laboratory results to industrial production (pilot and beyond)
- Processing techniques to increase the material quality and production scale while reducing the cost for commercialization
- Novel concepts that facilitate material transition to applications that enable new device capabilities
- Innovative device concepts that enable new transducer capabilities
Research Challenges and Opportunities
- Relaxor-based piezoelectric single crystals with improved performance such as expanded operating domain (temperature, strain, electric field)
- Scalable piezoelectric ceramics with preferred crystallographic orientation (“textured” piezoceramics)
- Hybrid perovskite materials with high piezoelectric properties and/or transduction efficiency
- Design and processing of configurationally complex electroactive materials
- Methodology for rapid determination of material property matrix that significantly accelerates transducer design
- Computational methodology for materials design and performance prediction
- Cost-effective crystal growth techniques for large, high-quality relaxor piezoelectrics
- Design-build-test innovative SONAR transducer concept
How to Submit
For detailed application and submission information for this research topic, please refer to our broad agency announcement (BAA) No. N0001425SB001.
Contracts: All white papers and full proposals for contracts must be submitted through FedConnect; instructions are included in the BAA.
Grants: All white papers for grants must be submitted through FedConnect, and full proposals for grants must be submitted through grants.gov; instructions are included in the BAA.