The ORNL-developed wireless communication's technology allows for the deployment of highly-reliable, low-power communications devices to operate in harsh physical and atmospheric environments.
ORNL researchers recognized for this work were Stephen Smith, Gregory Hanson, Michael Moore, John Jones Jr., Roberto Lenardduzzi, Michael Emery, Gary Turner, Nance Ericson, Timothy McKnight, James Hylton, James Moore, Alan Wintenberg, William Dress, Paul Ewing and Grady Vanderhoofven.
In addition, four awards recognizing excellence in technology transfer for work developed at ORNL were presented, according to Larry Dickens, ORNL representative and vice chair of the Federal Laboratory Consortium.
Technology transfer involves laboratories developing technologies that are then licensed to individual companies.
The organization covers 40 federal laboratories in a nine-state region of the Southeastern United States. The awards are presented in recognition of the researchers' hard work, selfless devotion to the pursuit of excellence and dedication to improving the American way of life.
"These awards represent a tremendous achievement by our staff that will benefit the American economy by providing marketable products and creating jobs," said ORNL Director Jeff Wadsworth.
Honors for work on thin-film rechargeable lithium batteries and microcantilevered-based biosensors--each developed at ORNL--were presented to laboratory representatives.
Thin-film rechargeable lithium batteries are less than 10 micrometers thick and when fully integrated with a device have energy and power densities surpassing other battery technologies. They can be recycled thousands of times and can be fabricated on a variety of substrates and devices in arbitrary shapes and to any size to meet specific application requirements.
Current ORNL researchers working on the project are Nancy Dudney and Ashok Choudhury.
ORNL's microcantilever-based biosensors can be used in the diagnosis of disease, cancer and cardiac markers, high throughput drug screening and exposure to chemical and bio-warfare agents.
Researchers from ORNL working on this project are Thomas Thundat, Zhiyu (Jerry) Hu and Russ Miller.
ORNL earned two honorable mentions in the competition, including the Laboratory-On-A-Chip technology and the new ion exchange and regeneration technology for water.
The lab on a chip is a microfabricated device that performs chemical and biochemical procedures under computer control, using miniscule quantities of samples to be analyzed.
Researchers working on this technology are Michael Ramsey, Stephen Jacobson, Roswitha Ramsey, Ashok Choudhury and Michael R. Knapp.
The selective ion exchange and regeneration for water treatment research involves using three separate technologies to remove and degrade the hazardous substance perchlorate--a component found in solid-fuel rockets that has contaminated water supplies in more that 24 states.
ORNL researchers Baohua Gu and Gilbert Brown have been working on this technology.
ORNL is a multiprogram science and technology laboratory managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy.