Team wins $3 million DoD grant A team of engineers led by UNL's Yongfeng Lu, associate professor of engineering, received a three-year grant exceeding $3 million to refine a process that coats surfaces with thin diamond films. The team is composed of engineers from UNL and the University of Missouri-Rolla. The grant came from the Department of Defense's Office of Naval Research and brings the possibility of an additional $2 million in years four and five of the study. The grant was awarded in March and announced April 14 by UNL. The process under exploration by the team was developed in the mid-1990s by Michigan-based QCC. The underlying reasons for the process are unknown - the technology has preceded the science. That makes it hard to improve the process or extend it to other material systems. Lu's team will attempt to tease out the "how" of the technology.
