LOW TEMPERATURE PLASMA SCIENCE CENTERS AND FACILITIES | DE FOA 0002037

Opportunity Information: Apply for DE FOA 0002037

The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, through the Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program, issued this funding opportunity announcement to support the creation and stewardship of coordinated research Centers and designated user Facilities focused on low temperature plasma science and engineering. The opportunity is intended to build cohesive, high-impact efforts that can push both fundamental understanding and practical applications of low temperature plasmas. Rather than funding isolated projects, DOE is looking for proposals that establish organized programs where people, tools, and capabilities are deliberately integrated to tackle frontier scientific questions and enable broader community use.

Two main award types are emphasized. First are Centers, which are expected to be “cohesive and synergistic,” meaning they should be formed by a closely interacting group of investigators who work as a coordinated team rather than as loosely connected individual labs. These centers should be organized around compelling scientific themes, shared experimental or computational capabilities, and a clear plan for collaborative research progress. Second are designated user facilities, which are meant to function as shared community resources similar to those described in Chapter 5 of the 2016 Frontiers of Plasma Science Workshops report. A designated user facility can be hosted by a single institution or jointly by multiple institutions, but in either case it should be structured so that external users can access specialized capabilities, measurements, or platforms that are difficult to assemble in a typical single-investigator setting.

The scientific scope centers on topical areas at the leading edge of low temperature plasma research. DOE highlights interfacial plasma, especially plasmas interacting with liquids where new chemical pathways arise at the gas-liquid boundary, enabling novel reactivity and potential process routes. Another priority area is plasma interactions with biomaterials, including the transport and delivery of plasma-generated reactive species across multiple interfaces such as liquids, cells, tissues, and polymers. This theme includes understanding mechanisms, dose and transport pathways, and the physical and chemical controls that determine biological outcomes.

The announcement also targets improved control of plasma-electromagnetic interactions, with an emphasis on the basic science of how radio-frequency electromagnetic power couples into plasmas to produce controllable conditions relevant to microelectronics and related processing. Plasma catalysis is identified as another key direction, focusing on how plasma-created reactive environments interact with catalysts and how catalyst selectivity can be understood and tuned in plasma-driven systems. Plasma-aided combustion and related chemically reactive flows are also included, with interest in how pulsed plasmas can be controlled to improve efficiency or steer chemical processing outcomes.

Additional emphasis areas include the interface between plasma and solid-state physics, particularly the physics and chemistry of boundary layers where plasmas meet solid surfaces. The FOA also calls out coherent structures and self-organization in low temperature plasmas, aiming at the underlying science of how ordered electric and transport patterns form and how they influence plasma behavior. Finally, DOE explicitly leaves room for other emerging directions, giving examples such as plasma-aided aeronautics and plasma process control using machine learning, signaling openness to strong proposals that define credible new frontiers and explain why facility or center-scale support is needed.

A central motivation, aligned with recommendations from the 2016 Frontiers of Plasma Science Workshops report, is to develop centers and/or user facilities that can provide a broad spectrum of plasma parameter measurements and generally strengthen measurement and diagnostic capability for the field. In practice, this means DOE is looking for efforts that can deliver robust experimental and/or computational infrastructure, well-documented methods, and reliable access models that materially expand what the community can measure, validate, and understand. The overall goal is to create sustained national capabilities that accelerate progress in low temperature plasma science while also enabling applied advances in areas like materials processing, energy-relevant chemistry, and biomedical technologies.

Administratively, this opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number DE-FOA-0002037) is a discretionary DOE Office of Science program solicitation using the cooperative agreement funding instrument, which typically implies substantial DOE involvement during project execution compared with standard grants. The activity category is science and technology research and development under CFDA 81.049. Eligibility is listed as unrestricted, meaning any entity type may apply as long as it meets any additional requirements stated in the full announcement. The FOA was created on December 21, 2018, with an original closing date of March 5, 2019. DOE anticipated making around 10 awards, with an award ceiling of $1.7 million per award.

• The Department of Energy - Office of Science, Office of Science in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "LOW TEMPERATURE PLASMA SCIENCE CENTERS AND FACILITIES" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 81.049.
• This funding opportunity was created on Dec 21, 2018.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Mar 05, 2019. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $1,700,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 10 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

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