AFOSR Supports Research to Solve 30-Year Old Dilemma of Scientific Community

  • Published
  • By Erin Crawley
  • AFOSR Public Affairs (Quantech)
ARLINGTON, Va. --  A team of researchers supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) have made a breakthrough in Electric Oxygen Iodine Laser (EOIL) research. The results were recently presented at the AFOSR Molecular Dynamics Program Review, held June 5-8, in Arlington.

Wayne C. Solomon, Aerospace Engineering professor emeritus, University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign, Urbana, Ill., is one of the principal investigators on the research team that made the breakthrough. The team's work is currently supported by AFOSR through the High Energy Laser Multidisciplinary Research Initiative (HEL MRI), funded by the Joint Technology Office. Solomon's team is working on high-energy, electric oxygen-iodine hybrid lasers, (EOILs).

Other research institutions involved in this HEL MRI include Emory University, Iowa State University, the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), and three private companies. Potentially, this technology could have a large impact on Air Force systems, particularly the airborne laser program (ABL), in addition to some other tactical uses of lasers.

During the poster session of the conference, Solomon discussed the challenges and successes of his research.

"We have been looking at a problem that has been bugging the scientific community for about 30 years and decided a few years ago that we would try to solve it," Mr. Solomon said. "It is a way to take oxygen, just plain oxygen, out of a discharge unit. You are basically discharging something like air. We converted that to an excited species; basically excited oxygen. We then took that energy and preserved it so that we could transfer it to an atomic iodine species. Then, we put mirrors on it and made the laser."

While Mr. Solomon's description might sound very simple, other researchers have tried it and it didn't turn out to be quite so easy, Mr. Solomon said. Yet Mr. Solomon's team has devised a way to rise to the challenge.

"We are now in the process of trying to look at the details of the chemistry of the plasma and to try to improve it in such a way that it will essentially be a much more efficient high-energy laser than the types flying on airplanes today," said Mr. Solomon.

Solomon predicts this basic research technology will transition in a couple of years. He said, "The small companies are working on the technology transition while the universities are plugging away to try to fill in all the interesting research gaps."

Oxygen plasmas have a variety of potential applications to Air Force technology and particularly lasers. Solomon's research is mostly directed towards understanding specific oxygen-iodine plasmas and how they can be applied to high-energy systems for the Air Force.

More than 90 researchers and scientists attended the AFOSR 2006 Contractors' Meeting in Molecular Dynamics. Organizations represented included the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Va; the Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio; and BioTools Inc. Dozens of researchers from universities worldwide included the Universität Göttingen, Germany, and the University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Other topics presented during the three-day conference included origins and failure in thermal barrier coatings, an update on plasma kinetics, and new electric hybrid lasers.
By supporting research programs such as this high energy closed-cycle chemical lasers MURI, AFOSR continues to expand the horizon of scientific knowledge through its leadership and management of the Air Force's basic research program. As a vital component of the Air Force Research Laboratory, AFOSR supports Air Force's mission of control and maximum utilization of air and space. Many of the technological breakthroughs enjoyed by millions today, such as lasers, GPS, and the computer mouse trace their scientific roots to research first funded by AFOSR.