Polymer Coating-Based Contaminant Control/Elimination for Exo-S Starshade Probe

Our First Contact Polymer (FCP) is an easy-to-apply, residue-less, peelable strip coat that protects and cleans optics, detectors, and other sensitive surfaces, restoring them to a pristine condition. Using FCP is as simple as spraying or brushing it on a surface of interest, allowing it to dry for 15 minutes, and stripping off the rugged coating when desired. Multiple measurements, including at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, show that FCP cleans better than any existing method, including the complicated, expensive, and hazardous CO2 snow, leaving no detectible residue. FCP is used to clean telescope optics at the Keck Observatory, GTC in the Canary Islands, Vandenberg Airforce Base, etc. The polymer was used by LIGO to clean the optics that enabled its breakthrough discovery of gravitational waves, and enables the THAAD missile interceptor by protecting and cleaning its optics. FCP was even used at the Smithsonian Institute to clean irreplaceable gems such as the Hope Diamond, demonstrating potential uses far beyond optics. Our technology is a crosscutting solution enabling the demanding cleanliness requirements of the Exo-S Starshade probe’s occulter, reducing the duration and cost of meeting Planetary Protection requirements without damaging sensitive components, and providing cleanroom-level cleanliness without the cleanroom, including for semiconductor manufacturing. Since our Red FCP exhibits anomalously high adhesion to certain metals and the amorphous metallic glass of Starshade petal edges, we developed in Phase I a variant with lower adhesion to metals. While the resulting adhesion was too low to be optimal, it demonstrated the adhesion tunability of our product. In Phase II, we produce 18 variants, identifying the lowest-cost one that provides optimal adhesion to protect, clean, and minimize the contribution of peeling to a mission’s alignment error budget. We also develop Standard Operation Procedures and training for application and removal.

Our surface-specific stripcoatings will provide superior cleaning & protection from recontamination. In Phase I , we began developing a truly enabling, crosscutting technology that fills needs for multiple NASA missions, successfully developing the ability to prepare space-ready, contamination-free surfaces at unprecedented levels. Our strippable, surface-tunable, and residue-less polymer solutions can be a critical and key enabling technology required to meet mission objectives. For example, the LIGO experiment used our FCP to clean the optics that enabled its breakthrough gravitational-wave discoveries. As in LIGO, the contamination control requirements for the Starshade and the Large Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) missions are so demanding that without the performance level of our technology, we believe those missions will not launch. LISA was recently selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) for its third large Cosmic Vision mission, while Starshades are seen as a key technology for the HabEx mission, currently under study. A starshade is also under consideration in support of the Wide-Field InfraRed Survey Telescope (WFIRST) and the Large UV/Optical/IR (LUVOIR) Surveyor. Potential future applications include creating/maintaining sterile & biological contamination-free surfaces enhancing NASA's Planetary Protection Mission, and nanotube doped, ESD controlled films for CCD and IRFPA sensor cleaning.

Post-SBIR commercialization will focus on photonics markets and markets where surface sterility is of interest. These include medical & scientific research, pharmaceutical & food productions, or any manufacturing currently using clean rooms to maintain sterility. Surface radiation contamination removal would interest government & commercial operators within the nuclear/defense industries.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.