Hosadurga Shobha, postdoctoral associate; Venkat Sekharipuram, former Ph.D. student now at Johnson & Johnson; Chemistry Professor James McGrath, and Atul Bhatnagar of Johnson & Johnson, received a patent for inventing "High Refractive Index Thermoplastic Polyphosphonates" (No. 6,288,210), which has been licensed to Johnson & Johnson Vision Products. These melt processable polymers are particularly useful for optical and ophthalmic parts, such as lenses. The patent describes a method of preparing optical and ophthalmic lenses by injection molding using the patented polymers.
Ph.D. graduate Kunrong Wang and Electrical Engineering Professor Fred Lee, who is the director of Center for Power Electronic Systems (CPES), received a patent for a "Soft-Switched Quasi-Single-Stage (QSS) Bi-Directional Inverter/Charger" (No. 6,330,170) that converts AC power to DC power and vice versa. The research was sponsored by Heart Interface Corporation of Canada, manufacturer of DC-AC power inverter/charger systems for motorhomes and campers. They wanted to run 110V AC outlets in a camper from automotive-type DC batteries, for use when campers are away from electric plug-ins. Then they wanted the batteries to be recharged when the engine is running or the camper is able to plug into an AC source. Thus, they needed a DC-AC and AC-DC converter. The DC-AC task is usually performed in two steps. Lee explains, "The battery voltage has to be converted to a higher voltage level by a DC-DC converter, then the voltage has to be inverted to an AC output with an inverter." The invention provides a
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Contact: Mike Martin
lucasd@vt.edu
540-951-9376
Virginia Tech
26-Apr-2002