The U.S. Navy lab here in San Diego, also known as SPAWAR (an acronym for Space and Naval Warfare) has over 300 licensable technologies.  According to Claire Dobransky in SPAWAR’s technology transfer office, these include around 10 opportunities in the clean tech space. 

Ms. Dobransky told me that the clean technologies are high priority items for the lab, which is looking to spin off the innovations to the commercial sector.

One interesting SPAWAR patent is U.S. Patent No. 6,433,465, entitled “Energy-harvesting device using electrostrictive polymers” (‘465 patent).  The ‘465 patent is directed to an apparatus for harvesting electrical power from a person’s walking movements using the electrical response phenomenon of electrostrictive polymers.

The approach taken by the ‘465 patent is to incorporate an energy-generating polymer (16) into the sole (14) of a shoe (12).  The polymer (16) is hooked into circuitry (24), which is in turn connected to an electrical cord so the generated electricity can be used or stored by the person wearing the shoe.

Other patents identified as clean technology offerings by SPAWAR include:

U.S. Patent No. 6,147,754, entitled “Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy soil contamination probe”;

U.S. Patent No. 6,406,777, entitled “Metal and glass structure for use in surface enhanced raman spectroscropy and method of fabricating the same”;

U.S. Patents Nos. 7,424,375 and 6,993,437, entitled “Tidal seepage meter”;

U.S. Patents Nos. 7,437,959 and 7,444,891, entitled “In-water hull cleaning sampling device”, and “In-water hull cleaning sampling method”, respectively;

U.S. Patent No. 7,153,749, entitled “Method of tuning threshold voltages of interdiffusible structures”; and

U.S. Patent No. 5,925,370, entitled “Bio-repellent matrix coating”.

For many of its offerings, SPAWAR provides a handy informational “tip sheet,” such as this one for the hull cleaning technology (spawar_in-water-hull-cleaning-tip.ppt). 

A complete list of the SPAWAR technologies available for license can be found at its Available Technologies page.

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