Defense contract funds three collaborative JVIC projects

A U.S. Department of Defense contract signed last year is keeping researchers at Jordan Valley Innovation Center busy under the microscope.

JVIC tenants Brewer Science Inc., Crosslink Inc. and U.S. Photonics are in the middle of a 12-month, $500,000 research and development project for weapons systems designed to improve the accuracy of firearms. Brewer Science and Crosslink also are involved in two other projects worth about $1.15 million combined through a Columbia-based consortium group.

Temperature controls
Rolla-based Brewer Science is heading the collaborative venture that involves thermal sensors, with help from St. Louis-based Crosslink Inc. and Springfield-based U.S. Photonics. In late July, the companies were awarded the job through the NanoTechnology Enterprise Consortium, which had just inked a $3.8 million, nine-project contract with the U.S. Army Armament Research Development and Engineering Center.

Brewer Science also is working on a roughly $600,000 project led by the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Crosslink is fronting an NTEC project worth $550,000 that should be completed this fall.

The NTEC was established in 2009 with the help of former Sen. Kit Bond as a way for its 15 members – including Brewer Science, Crosslink, U.S. Photonics, MU and Boeing Co. – to collaborate on research and developments for the Defense Department.

NTEC Executive Director Rob Monsees said the thermal-sensors project would help NTEC further develop hardware that can produce results for the U.S. military.

“It’s a really great collaborative project that takes advantage of the strengths of these three key NTEC-member companies,” Monsees said. “In this particular project, you’ve got a marrying of printed-electronics capabilities that Brewer Science has, and then you have the ability to develop very small capacitors with Crosslink, and you have unique technology coming from U.S. Photonics.”

Jim Lamb, director of the Printed Electronics Technology Center for Brewer Science, said the 31-year-old company with offices in North America, Europe and Asia has been developing materials with carbon nanotubes for military and private applications. The firm’s primary work is in producing semiconductor microchips for several electronics industries.

“We’ve taken that focus to working on sensors,” Lamb said, noting the MU project is developing a chemical sensor incorporating Brewer Science’s nanotube technology.

The Defense thermal sensor is designed to monitor the temperature of propellant powder within munitions bags, because internal temperatures can affect the trajectory of the ammunition fired, said U.S. Photonics President Jake Conner.

“The ultimate goal of the Army is to increase accuracy so that there are less innocent casualties. They want to be able to put the round on the bad guy and not have any chance of hitting an innocent bystander or collateral damage to property,” Conner said.

A demonstration model already has been created for project managers, and based on their responses, Lamb said the work has strong potential to lead to future projects.

Crosslink Vice President Don Landy said the company is taking energy-storage technology it has developed and incorporating it in the Brewer-led venture.

“We are actually the prime contractor in another program through NTEC that is directed at energy-storage devices for use in precision-guided projectiles,” Landy said.

He said some of Crosslink’s technology is transferable to the work on the thermal sensors. “We are taking technology developed under one program and using it in another,” he said.

The leverage game
Monsees said the pace of establishing NTEC’s first round of Defense projects has been slow going, but he is pleased with the work that is under way.

“It takes awhile to get that first set of projects through the procurement process,” Monsees said, adding that 16 projects were submitted and only nine were selected. “I think the pull on the technology from the Army has been very strong, and they’ve been very positive about the work they’ve seen come out of this collaboration.”

Monsees said the first round of Army-funded programs was aided by Defense work the participating companies previously had done on their own. “And we’re hopeful that we can continue to find resources within the Defense Department and the Army to continue this groundbreaking work,” Monsees said.

Brewer Science founder Terry Brewer said NTEC membership is significant to his company because of these collaborative opportunities.

“We work really hard to drive partnerships with other companies, universities and the government. JVIC was our first big, most successful example of that. We’ve tried to bring other groups together to build on that cluster and make it large,” Brewer said. “For us, (NTEC) was attractive because it was another example of a sort of a sea crystal to evolve this sort of cooperative technology development toward product end.”

Landy said Crosslink has worked with Defense on as many as eight separate projects since 2005. Other NTEC member works also could help Crosslink secure funds appropriated in fiscal 2010 and fiscal 2011, he said. That’s important, according to Landy, because this year Crosslink will finish work on three Defense projects worth roughly $6.5 million. “It’s a nice little fit where there is a lot of leveraging going on with funding,” he said. “We are aware DoD budgets are being cut, so we are trying to leverage funding so that if we are learning something over here, we can find (other places) where it can be applied.”