FY2010 - Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Seed Money Fund—
Measurement Science and Systems Engineering Division
opened position (45°C). This embodiment uses a reactive polymer valve body of a copolymer of
n-isopropylacrylamide and dimethylacrylamide, with a transition temperature (LCST) between the closed
and open state of ~42°C. An RF heating circuit has been designed and demonstrated to remotely actuate
the polymer valve. The system is comprised of external driving electronics and a miniaturized coil pickup
integrated as the power source for the heating element of the implantable valve system. The current
embodiment of this system uses a commercially available, off-the-shelf ferrite core (1.5 mm diameter,
Fair-rite Type 78) and has been demonstrated to inductively couple >30 mW of power wirelessly from an
external coil antenna to the implanted series resonant circuit, consisting of the coupling inductor, a series
capacitor, and an impedance-matched resistive heating element. Fetal tracheal balloons, manufactured by
our industrial collaborator, have been modified to feature “always-open” polymeric valves using
copolymer formulations with LCST below physiological temperature. These valves have been implanted
in fetal lambs under the approval of ORNL-ACUC tracking Protocol 0390, October 28, 2009. Preliminary
studies have been conducted which evaluated the deployability of the miniature valve system and the
impact of these valves on fetal lung volume.
Program Development
The project has successfully submitted a proposal to the National Heart Lung Blood Institute of the
National Institutes of Health under the support of NIH program manager Dr. Carol Blaisdell;
1R21HL108250-01 entitled “Wireless Valve for Dynamic Tracheal Occlusion Therapy.”
Information Shared
McKnight, T. E., A. Johnson, K. J. Moise, Jr., M. N. Ericson, J. S. Baba, J. B. Wilgen, and B. M.
Evans III. 2010. Remote Actuated Valve Implant. U.S. Patent Application 20100241241, file March 23.
00519
Dual Waveband Passive Longwave Infrared (LWIR) Uncooled Imager
Scott R. Hunter and Nickolay V. Lavrik
Project Description
The project is to develop an entirely new and innovative technique for obtaining infrared imagery that can
be overlaid with visible images in the same device. In our technique, photon tunneling is utilized with
thermally actuated bimorph structures to passively convert midwave or longwave infrared to visible
radiation that is then overlaid on the visible light image. This can be accomplished by fabricating the
infrared imaging structures using optically transparent materials (400–750 nm range). Visible light from
the scene will pass through the structures and can be used to image the scene in the visible, while the
infrared detector structure simultaneously converts the incoming infrared radiation to a visible signal that
is overlaid on the visible image. This technique allows very high sensitivity imaging with near
background limited performance (no electronic readout noise sources) using small pixel pitches and
scalable to large pixel array sizes (1000 1000 pixels or larger—there are no inherent constraints on the
upper array size limits) in an extremely low power, low cost imager. The goal of the project is to explore
the unique advantages of this dual wavelength imaging approach with the modeling and fabrication of a
well-developed proof-of-principle device.
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