Mission Systems

Anticipating and Enabling Self-Sustaining Operations

APL is pioneering disruptive technologies that meet mission objectives and create resilience with novel power systems and critical supply chain alternative materials, including converting waste products into mission-enabling resources for sustained readiness of our future forces.

Mission

Featured Work

Advancing Materials for Thermal Management

More than half the energy consumed in the American residential industry is spent on heating and cooling homes. Researchers at APL have made a significant breakthrough in the development of advanced materials technology that can efficiently manage thermal conditions, particularly in buildings and data centers.

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Researchers cut and assembled tiny solar cells on thin, flexible circuit boards before sealing them in a protective polymer to create a fiber-like strand that was woven with nylon into a small textile.

Developing Battery- and Solar-Powered Fibers

APL researchers have established new, scalable methods of developing battery- and solar-powered fibers, making it theoretically possible for electrical energy to be harvested from, and stored in, the clothing people wear.

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A researcher experiments in APL’s biomanufacturing lab. (Credit: Johns Hopkins APL)

Advancing Biomanufacturing for National Security

Researchers at APL are combining their technical expertise, creativity, and national security acumen to put biomanufacturing to work to make supply chains more secure, strengthen the defense industrial base, and produce materials wherever and whenever.

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We're committed to finding the most effective, resilient, cutting-edge power sources. Textiles that integrate light energy harvesting and battery fibers could revolutionize what wearables today can achieve. Very soon these fibers will enable distributed fabric-based power, heating, communications, and sensing while providing the comfort and ease of regular textiles. At APL, we have developed components for all these critical technologies and we have achieved some of the best-performing devices reported to date. This could be revolutionary for our forces operating in austere environments.

Jeff Maranchi Exploration Program Area Manager, Research and Exploratory Development

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Battery- and solar-powered fibers could be woven directly into fabric to harvest and store electrical energy right from the textile.

Fiber Power

Researchers from APL have established new, scalable methods of developing battery- and solar-powered fibers, making it theoretically possible to harvest and store electrical energy right from the clothing people wear. These fibers could power high-performance wearable electronics that breathe, stretch, and wash just like conventional textiles.

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A team of researchers at Johns Hopkins APL is using artificial intelligence to revolutionize materials discovery.

AI Helps Develop Novel Superconductor

A multidisciplinary team at APL has discovered a novel superconductor using artificial intelligence. The key to this breakthrough came through combining materials science expertise and real data into a predictive AI model, which vastly accelerates the timeline of targeted materials discovery.

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Meet Our Experts

Sarah Herman Program Manager, Biological and Chemical Sciences

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Bobby Armiger Branch Supervisor, Exploratory Science

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Morgan Trexler Program Manager, Science of Extreme and Multifunctional Materials

Learn more about Morgan M. Trexler

Jeffrey Maranchi Exploration Program Area Manager

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Konstantinos Gerasopoulos Program Manager, Physics, Electronic Materials, and Devices

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Impact

Climate Security

APL is bringing all of its core competencies to bear on this critical challenge area, assembling top experts from a variety of scientific fields and partners to explore strategic opportunities to protect our operations in a changing world.

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