This should always be the first thought when looking to provide a demonstration or proof of concept.
The researchers used a gallium nitride semiconductor in the "proof of concept" tests.
The RUP has some mechanisms for developing a proof of concept, primarily in the perform Architectural Synthesis activity of the analysis and design workflow.
The customer was pushing significant formality and detail into this first phase, when we were only supposed to be working on a proof of concept.
With experience, you could code a proof of concept in a morning and have it running on a cloud server the same afternoon.