Case 97-10

Idaho National Engineering Laboratory

Chemical Materials & Processes Department: SIMS

A Case Study of the R&D Value Mapping Project

Institute for Policy Research and Development

School of Public Policy

Georgia Institute of Technology

Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0345

Unedited Draft

This case was written by Barry Bozeman, based on interviews he conducted with the assistance of Monica Gaughan. Comments or questions should be directed to Bozeman at 404.894.0093 or via email to barry.bozeman@pubpolicy.gatech.edu. The research was sponsored by the Department of Energy’s Division of Basic Energy Sciences, Contract ER 45562. The views presented here are the case author’s and do not necessarily represent those of the Department of Energy of Georgia Institute of Technology.

      I.            Project Description

The SIMS project involves analysis of ions, including development and application of computer models of ions. The project team’s search for computer models of ions began in 1982-83. The contributions that have come out of this work can be divided into three categories: (1) theory of a branch of chemistry dealing with high temperature (900 to 1500 degree centigrade) materials, especially their ionization properties; (2) ion optic modeling programs, and (3) ion optic systems. Since about 1986, the group has also been involved in analysis of contaminants as they are absorbed onto organic materials. Currently, the analytical technology is accomplished by attempting to dissolve material off a surface and then analyzing chemical properties. The group has developed a software tool, SIMION, that has been distributed throughout the nation and to many other countries to a diverse set of scientists interested in characterization of materials. The project is broader than its BES supported aspects. The focus of recent BES-funded work has been the dulidation of mechanisms for the formation of phase ions from high temperature inorganic matrices.

Despite some linkage from one research topic to the next, the overall work of the research group is not easily bounded. The team is interdisciplinary in nature and has taken up a number of different aspects of basic research on ions, depending on the particular interests and expertise of the five to six principle investigators in the project and research opportunities that emerge. Many of the most important "lessons" to be drawn from the work pertain to the development of execution of a basic research program within a laboratory setting where limited basic research is performed. In many respects, the team is an "outlier" at INEL, but one which has thrived despite many changes in the lab and its technological and managerial directions Jim Delmore (the head of the team), Gary Groenwald, David Dahl and Anthony Appelhaus. The team also provided a tour of their facilities.

   II.            Technical Background of the Project

The diverse work of the project leads one to the question of the field to which the team is contributing. From one perspective, the work is part of the field of mass spectroscopy and directed to the nearly 3,000 persons affiliated with the American Society for Mass Spectroscopy. But the relevant "clients" for the research, including industrial users of the knowledge developed (little applied science or technology has flowed from the project) includes a much wider set. The project team estimates that there are more than one million users who are concerned with some aspect of mass spectroscopy materials analysis. The technical niche of the team members is a focus on large molecules rather than atoms (which is the orientation of the majority of researchers using mass spectroscopy for analysis of materials). The number of persons working with thermal ion emitters, the team’s specialization, is a small community, probably 500 or less in the world. The ions the INEL scientists examine can create heavy molecules as well as atomic particles. Currently, there are no direct commercial applications. Their contributions are to the basic science literature and give no direct cues as to how commercial users might apply their findings.

Recently, the focus of the BES-funded portion of the team’s work has been on the dulidation of mechanisms for the formation of phase ions from high temperature inorganic matrices is the main thrust of this program. There are two main approaches for producing these ion emitters: presynthesis of the desired species before preparing the emitter and production of the desired species via a chemical reaction during emitter operation. The team has devised several instruments to enable the study of these chemical reactions. As part of their research, tube ion sources have been developed in which large samples of ion emitting matrices are pressed into refractory metal tubes and heated to ion emission temperature. Using a mass spectrometer, the researchers have examined gas/solid reactions occurring as the material is heated to high temperature. Imaging studies conducted by the researchers have shown that certain ion emitters originate directly from the surfaces of the inorganic matrices. This work indicates that the emitters are micro chemical factories either producing the species needed for ion production or preserving the presynthesized species. In both cases a matrix is provided conducive to ion emission. This stream of work is expected to result in methods for custom designing new emitters. At the same time as the researchers are developing experimental results, they are formulating new theories describing ion emission.

The most recent experimental work uses a pulsed ion source for determining the extent to which preformed ions are sufficiently stable to be stored on a surface by electrostatic repulsion, followed by electrostatic extraction. In an effort to develop a better understanding of the motion of ions in electric and magnetic fields, a new modeling code has been developed that enables the ion motion to be predicted in various electrostatic and magnetic fields.

III.                       Project History

          Jim Delmore’s interests motivated the original path of the research. After taking a job at INEL focusing on the measurement of fission, he began working on ion emissions in solid materials in 1966. As he describes it, it began as a "series of recipes- separate out titanium, put through a formula to produce ions. No one really understood how the recipes worked." In October, 1979, Delmore stepped down as manager of a fission research group and started doing fundamental science in separations and analysis. He wrote the first of several research proposals to work on fundamental analysis of ions.

After Delmore received funding for the 1979 proposal, he was later joined by Appelhaus (1984), Dahl (1985) and Groenwald (1991).

Generally, the BES support has funded about 1.5 FTEs plus a graduate student. The BES funding has been "core funding" for the team, in the sense that it is relatively stable, but there have been a variety of funding sources, both DOE and other sources such as the Army and the National Institute of Justice (for material characterization related to forensics). Generally, the search for resources has been time-consuming and the team feels that their work has not been funded at an adequate level. As a result the work has grown slowly, "solving one problem at a time." Despite the fact that the overall funding level has been problematic, the BES base is viewed as especially valuable, in part because of the funding "philosophy" of BES. For example, the fact that BES does not insist on milestones has been, in the view of the project members, quite valuable. Delmore observed, "BES maintains that best work comes out of work that does not have milestones. We agree. As soon as milestones are expected, we are under the gun. If you fail the objective, you can still meet the milestone. Without the milestone, it’s more likely the objective will be reached."

          With only ten full-time staff, the group is not large by INEL standards and, indeed does not even exist on the formal organization chart. The organization scheme seems fluid and is not highly salient to the team. They are a "technology team" assigned to a Lockheed manager under INEL’s matrix management system. The officially apportion their time to various management systems but management oversight is limited. As one team member observed, "matrix management is nonfunctional. We are a technology team but no one is really sure what that means. It’s a real hodge podge. There is not acknowledgment of our work or that it is valuable." The team indicated that they are a curiosity, a basic research team, in a laboratory where there is limited involvement in basic research and where most technical personnel focus on highly applied work. The vestiges of basic nuclear research disappeared once the INEL reactor was shut down in 1969.

          The research team finds themselves in the position of having to serve two different masters, each with very different agendas. The BES master is served with publication in scientific journals. The Lockheed master is served by bringing in externally sponsored research dollars (from DOE and others) and finding applications for their basic research, especially in the military. For example, the Army is funding the team develop the fundamental chemistry knowledge relevant to controlling mustard and nerve gas. An understanding of these poison gases requires knowledge of ion molecule chemistry.

          When asked what it is like to work with cross-cutting constraints and highly diverse priorities, one team member described the environment as follows: "We are operating largely in a state of anarchy. Lockheed managers are so distracted with the internal things they do among themselves that they don’t have time to pay attention to us. As long as we pull together as a team, we are competitive in proposal writing."

          The researchers feel that they owe their success in proposal writing and garnering external resources to the nature of their interdisciplinary team. The team’s specialties include analytical chemistry (Groenwald), physics (Appelhaus), physical chemistry (Delmore), and computer science (Dahl), as well as a surface chemist now on leave. According to Delmore,

"We can address interdisciplinary problems. Classical chemistry or physics, forget it. No one at any university could have written our proposal [last week’s proposal on the organics on salt surfaces] because there is not enough diversity to compete with a program such as ours, one that includes so many aspects- ion, high temperature, instrumentation, chemistry. The diversity of the group is what allows it to be so successful.

          Interestingly, the team, despite it interest in widespread sponsorship from diverse end users, has avoided use of CRADAs and traditional technology transfer. While the group noted they have been encouraged to develop CRADAs they have avoided it because the CRADAs usually involve relatively small amounts of money and do not justify the time required. As one of the interviewees noted "people with CRADAs are immediately faced with economically untenable situation. They are the worse kind of money you can get."

          Similarly, the group’s experience with technology transfer and intellectual property has not been positive. In part this is simply because, as Groenwald noted, their work is too far upstream to be of great interest to industry: "Industry appreciates knowing what kind of areas we are in, but they don’t want to use it. There is too much of an investment left to make."

Another problem is that the group’s limited interaction with the lab’s technology transfer and licensing operations has not been satisfactory. While Lockheed is beginning to emphasize patents, this has not positively affected the group. Dave Dahl described one experience:

For example, we are interested in self-discharging optics. This ties in well with SIMS and we’re using it internally in half of instruments. We cannot get management to apply for patent because they cannot see it making a million dollars a year. You effectively stop the technology that way. Unless it looks like a killer, Lockheed doesn’t want to put money into it.

Groenwald noted that "time and money effort to patent is substantial and horizon is short." He also pointed to high turnover in the technology transfer office and indicated that the personnel are not particularly supportive and, indeed, may begin charging groups for technology transfer activities. According to Delmore, there is a "mutual ignoring," and the group goes about its work publishing with little concern about patent protection.

Dahl noted that the office may start charging groups for tech transfer activities.

          The group was asked if the widespread cutbacks in many of the national labs had affected their work. The general view was that there has been little impacts. There have been no lay-offs at INEL, though it has reduced it size by more than 1,200 employees through voluntary reductions and early retirement. Now many are being hired back. According to Dave Dahl, Lockheed has a "monkey and tin cup" business model. The group is not really worried about cutbacks because they are "bottom feeders" and because the generate a good deal of their resources through proposals to external agencies. They prefer this model because of their wish to avoid micro-management. According to Delmore, "we respond to agency announcements and write good proposals. We operate a lot like Battelle.

          Delmore described the groups operation as "layers within the organization." The core BES money is especially important to their mode of operating. They begin work with BES money and then go after other funding sources. Some of the source fund fundamental chemistry, but the BES research is also leveraged for work with other agencies, including EM 50 from DOE, National Institute of Justice, and the Army. "These are the next layers where we take the instruments and put them to use," Delmore observed. "We go from the BES work to OGA or NIJ as the next layer. These are straight applications. We go from fundamental work to applications, a sort of pyramid analogy."

          Groenwald noted that there is also a "temporal segregation" to their work. He noted "Janni (another team member) and I are doing work using instruments that the others worked on five years ago. We feed them problems we are having now so that they can think about future instrumentation."

          According to Dahl, there is a feedback loop:

We are in a technology team-centered environment. Otherwise, there is no way to integrate and get through Valley of Death [note: his term for the movement from fundamental research to application]. The fact that there are no feedback loops internally means going through idiosyncrasies of cross-group interactions with other agencies and research programs. We are growing a program of efforts that go through the technology team.

Groenwald went on to emphasis the crucial role played by BES in the group’s mode of operating and agenda-setting: "If there were no BES funding we then we would not be competitive within 2 to 3 years, maybe sooner. We live off of new technology that comes from our BES-funded research.

          Delmore also underscored the importance of the BES funding: "Who funds interdisciplinary work? Ion optic modeling is inherently interdisciplinary. Chemistry funds us because electron microscopy requires a good ion optic model. It takes someone with a longer than three year frame to fund our type of work."

          Appelhaus noted that for the first three or four years of their fundamental work they were just guessing about possible applications:

As we began, we experimented a little, but what we needed to get was someone who would think about applications. We looked different places [i.e. different agencies and funding sources] for people who could do that. That allowed us to expand and keep going. It is constant feedback [from end users] that enables us to develop. We have had a lot of people tell us that SIMS would not solve applications problems. Now we have applications, we can show people. This doesn’t happen because of interaction with other groups [at INEL], it has to happen within the group, because we care about solving one another’s problems regardless of the specific funding. You need to be able to assess reach of researcher to where the technology is being used. Is it University A to University B? Or physics to Chemistry? It happens in this group where we can all work together. And it happens quickly. We understand one another’s problems, and can solve them for one another.

According to Dave Dahl, "our group is small enough to have routine discussions with minimal hierarchy. There are enough problems with interdisciplinary communication. Having hierarchy would further complicate communications. We try not to get involved with management and its problems. If we did, we would have compartmentalization. As it is, this is a very fun place to work."

          On several occasions, the group emphasized their detachment from other groups and core activities of INEL. But, in general, the detachment appeared to have positive effects, sheltering the group from distractions that would deflect them from their work.

 IV.            Outputs and Impacts

The scientific impact of the group’s work is chiefly in the field of ion optics. A highly interdisciplinary field, ion optics work is especially prominent in Europe, especially the Netherlands and Germany. In the U.S., leading work is performed, among other sites, at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Scripps Lab in La Jolla.

A major impact of the INEL work is in expanding the ability of researchers to work with ion optics and ion emitters by providing an analytical software tool. This is important because the field is highly interdisciplinary. As one of the INEL researchers described the field, there "is a collection of physicists who wandered in from the field, also a group of diviners or wizards that applied their own programs, consulting, and designing their own instruments, some who came from math."

What the INEL group accomplished was to provide a set of analytical tools that persons from and of a variety of fields could use, even without previous experience in analytical chemistry or materials science. The software tool, which goes by the name SIMION, has been distributed throughout the world. One team member described the contribution of their software and associated tools:

What we effectively did was to increase the user group. Now someone without official technical credentials can use the instruments. We have an easy program to approach and use. So we have a huge impact in the mass spectrometry field, and a growing reputation with the physics community because we are easy to use and accessible.

In developing SIMION, the INEL researchers were initially unsure about the demand for the product. But once a version was developed that could be used on a personal computer, they were surprised to see how many users and commercial vendors wanted a copy. It soon became, as the team described it, "the holy grail" for persons doing such analysis. It has had the effect of expanding interest in ion optic research because persons who are not experts in the field, but who have applications, can now use graduate students or assistants to perform the ion optic analysis while continuing to focus on the science and applications of interest. The tool is also used by researchers who wish to enhance their understanding of ion optic analysis while not wishing to become experts in the field.

Despite the fact that the INEL work has no direct commercial applications, the team has identified and cultivated a set of end users. Particularly important is work performed by Gary Groenwold and Tony Appelhaus on analysis of chemical warfare impacts on soil and water. This helps the military detect very small, trace levels of materials. By, for example, taking a soil sample and placing it on tape and then putting the sample in their instruments, the team can provide a detailed and exacting analysis of trace materials. This is of interest to the Army in dealing with stockpiles and their emissions. The research team can help identify leaks and low level emissions. Nuclear emissions are detected with thermal ion emitter technology. There is a large set of nuclear users of the analytical approaches developed by the team. There are also potential geochemical applications by end users concerned with virtually any age dating objective as thermal emitters provide a standard approach to age dating.

But the preponderance of the group’s work over the years has been producing fundamental knowledge about ions and chemical reactions on materials. This has resulted in a long list of publications in scientific journals and a rationale for sustained funding by BES.

The group’s work has had some impact on "human capital" (other than the team itself) as a result of interactions with universities and students. But these interactions have been modest. During recent years, two master’s degree students from Idaho State performed their thesis research with the INEL team and a University of Arizona student is working on a Ph.D. in high temperature ion emitters. An Idaho State University undergraduate worked at the lab as an assistant and then went to University of Texas for a master’s degree. Generally, however, the INEL group feels that working with students is not as easy as at other facilities, partly because of the relatively remote location and partly because the regional universities are not among the strongest.

    V.            Impact Maps

The impact model could be described as the use of core BES funding to sustain basic research in optics and analytical chemistry which, in turn, is used to develop applications of interest to a wide variety of end users and funding agencies. While little of the group’s work appears to have near-term commercial implications, much of it has applications, often in defense but in some civilian government applications as well.

The group has been successful in developing a steady stream of publications and papers. The fact that there are few opportunities to work with students means that most of their work is diffused through publications and applications rather than the development and diffusion of human capital.

VI .    Conclusions

This is a study in the survival of basic research, and applications research flowing directly from basic research, in an institutional context where basic research is uncommon and given little internal support. The group seems to have minimal ties to other INEL groups, to management or to technology transfer personnel. But if its intraorganizational ties are few, its interorganizational ties are many.

The group leader is a long-time INEL employee and the group’s membership is stable and has considerable longevity. As the nature of INEL has changed, with a de-emphasis in basic research pertaining to nuclear energy and important changes in management regimes, the group has managed to effectively shelter itself from that turbulence. The BES funding has played a major role in their effort to sustain themselves. Not only has the BES funding been vital to the continuance of their basic research, the funds have been leveraged in ingenious ways. The group has used the knowledge developed from BES projects to develop applications which, in turn, are of interest to a wide array of funding agencies. In an environment no longer conducive to basic research, the group has nonetheless flourished. The lynchpin is the core BES funding. Without that funding the general strategy the group has employed would not be possible and the excellent basic research and applications they have developed would have likely been lost.

The case also says much about the nature of interdisciplinary basic research. By bringing together a group well versed in the respective scientific specialties, and, at the same time, having over-lapping and compatible interests, they have thrived. The fact that the group is relatively isolated in the broader organization of INEL has been turned into an asset. With rapid, routine, and intense communication within the group, and little effort being devoted to inter-group communication and institutional maintenance activities, the group has managed to focus its efforts and work at a high level of performance. The dependence of the group on applications of interest to other agencies seems to have been salutary, especially in the building of an entrepreneurial approach with a laboratory where there is typically limited attention to the writing of proposals for external agencies. Clearly, the group thinks strategically and collegially about its agenda and its operating style has proved rewarding.