TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER OPPORTUNITY: Generation of Polystyrene Latex Spheres with Incorporated Fluorescent Dyes (LAR-TOPS-295)

NASA’s Technology Transfer Program solicits inquiries from companies interested in obtaining license rights to commercialize, manufacture and market the following technology. License rights may be issued on an exclusive or nonexclusive basis and may include specific fields of use. NASA provides no funding in conjunction with these potential licenses. THE TECHNOLOGY: Polymeric particles are used extensively for seeding airflows in wind tunnels, biological and histological staining, among other applications. For wind tunnel applications, particle image velocimetry is often used to determine the interaction of various models and surfaces with surrounding airflows. Measurements near the wall are particularly relevant and unfortunately exceptionally challenging due to the large level of background noise arising from reflection of incident light off the surface of the model being studied. Thus, the ability to seed the airflow with a material that can be used to accurately portray the airflow properties (i.e., minimal particle lag) while enabling near wall measurements with improved signal to noise ratio is of high interest to wind tunnel researchers. Although polystyrene microspheres are often the seed material of choice for subsonic airflow studies. These seed materials, however, do not provide any benefit for near wall measurements compared to other state-of-the-art seed materials. Consequently, in this innovation NASA scientists have developed this method of generating dye-doped polystyrene microspheres using novel synthetic approaches. The novel features of this invention are the utility of specific chemical functionalities, monomeric species, environmental additives (buffers), and polyelectrolytes to promote incorporation of dye molecules into developing polystyrene microspheres while enabling control of the spectral properties of the dye relative to pH dependence. These particles will have great utility for wind tunnel measurements near the wall where the state-of-the-art seed materials are not able to collect data. Additionally, the incorporation of these dyes will offer other avenues of data collection including temperature and pressure of the airflows and wind tunnel regions. Likewise, the ability to selectively filter the data collected from these dye-doped polystyrene microspheres can have further applications including the direct visualization of 2 or more fluid flows mixing, among other applications. To express interest in this opportunity, please submit a license application through NASA’s Automated Technology Licensing Application System (ATLAS) by visiting https://technology.nasa.gov/patent/LAR-TOPS-295 If you have any questions, please e-mail NASA’s Technology Transfer Program at [email protected] with the title of this Technology Transfer Opportunity as listed in this SAM.gov notice and your preferred contact information. For more information about licensing other NASA-developed technologies, please visit the NASA Technology Transfer Portal at https://technology.nasa.gov/ These responses are provided to members of NASA’s Technology Transfer Program for the purpose of promoting public awareness of NASA-developed technology products, and conducting preliminary market research to determine public interest in and potential for future licensing opportunities. No follow-on procurement is expected to result from responses to this Notice.