The proposed project will fund the US portion of an international jaxa project [1] to investigate the properties and structure of molten and supercooled metal oxides using the electrostatic levitation…

This federal contract award, valued at $524,377, was granted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to Materials Development Inc. to fund the U.S. portion of an international project with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to investigate the properties and structure of molten and supercooled metal oxides. The project will utilize the Electrostatic Levitation Furnace (ELF) on the International Space Station (ISS) as well as ground-based synchrotron X-ray and neutron studies. The 2.5-year project will perform flight experiments on molten barium oxide-titanium dioxide compositions, with sample launches planned for 2019 and 2020. The measured thermophysical properties will be correlated with atomic structure data. This contract is not associated with a set-aside designation.

The proposed project will fund the US portion of an international jaxa project [1] to investigate the properties and structure of molten and supercooled metal oxides using the electrostatic levitation furnace (ELF) on the international space station (ISS) and ground-based synchrotron x-RAY and neutron studies. NASA is funding a 6 month phase of work that will provide 15 samples to be launched on HTV-8 in mid-2019. This proposal is for an additional 2.5 years of funding by NASA. Under the proposed project, NASA investigators will implement experiments using the ISS ELF to provide some of the first results from the instrument for US investigators. Flight experiments on molten barium oxide-titanium dioxide pseudo-binary compositions will be performed during the first and second years of the project. Samples will be launched on HTV-8 in mid-2019 and a second set of samples is planned for launch on HTV-9 in 2020. The measured thermophysical properties (density, viscosity and surface tension) will be correlated with atomic structure obtained from synchrotron x-RAY and neutron methods and by using structure-property models in collaboration with the japanese investigators. The third year will be devoted to analysis of flight data, completing characterization of samples and publishing the results. Work will be published in a timely way consistent with the goal of providing data to the broader scientific community. The project team brings together the skills and experience needed to implement a complex research program.