NASA Engineer Earns Goddard Innovation Award for Sun-studying Photon Sieves

Goddard Engineer Kevin Denis gets development award for photon screens.

Goddard’s Office of the Chief Technologist called engineer Steven Denis as the FY23 Internal Research and Development (IRAD) Innovator of the Year, an honor the workplace bestows yearly on people who show the very best in development.

Denis showed determination and development in establishing hair-thin photon screens to focus severe ultraviolet light– a tough wavelength to catch. Thin membranes matter for solar science, he stated, due to the fact that these screens transfer approximately 7 times more light than thicker products. Denis’s work will open brand-new methods to study the Sun in much better information and comprehend its impact in the world and the planetary system.

Working carefully with solar researchers over several years through Goddard’s IRAD, or Internal Research and Development program, Denis established brand-new methods to develop larger and thinner membranes of silicon and niobium. These photon screens, produced in Goddard’s Detector Development Laboratory, are so thin they need to be supported by a honeycomb lattice of thicker silicon to avoid tearing. Engraved with tiny holes in a circular pattern, they refract light comparable to Fresnel lenses utilized in lighthouses. Severe ultraviolet light travelling through this screen is bent slowly inward to a remote receiver.

“It’s a large physical obstacle to build screens with such accuracy,” stated Goddard heliophysicist Dr. Doug Rabin. “Their tiniest functions are a couple of microns throughout. Kevin has actually reacted to that obstacle with really imaginative options.”

Denis’s photon screens need to become able to deal with functions near the surface area of the Sun 10 to 50 times smaller sized than can be seen today with the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s EUV imager, Rabin stated.

Denis takes motivation from working carefully with researchers to get rid of barriers to advancing their field, he stated. “With this job in specific, researchers Rabin and Adrian Daw have actually done a fantastic task utilizing the screens in near-term science applications while we press the innovation for bigger and more capable objectives.”

Denis’s work was highlighted in Physics Today, a publication of the American Institute for Physics, for its significance ahead of time essential innovation that can attend to exceptional concerns of how coronal heating and velocity takes place in the Sun’s lower environment.

With 2 patents currently granted based upon this job, Denis is sending a brand-new application for his newest fabrication procedure.

While he continues to press the limitations of engineering, Denis stated he is eagerly anticipating seeing them utilized in objectives of increasing intricacy and ability. “It’s a fantastic inspiration to see they are going to be utilized for brand-new science.”

By Karl B. Hille

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.