When It Comes to Fusion, Materials Matter

[Marlin]

When It Comes to Fusion, Materials Matter

https://www.ucdavis.edu/blog/when-it-comes-fusion-materials-matter

[Core Content]

Jeremy Munday and Micah Karahadian smile beside equipmental equipmentin a lab, one wearing a white lab coat.

Researchers from UC Davis and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory discovered that solid materials can significantly increase fusion rates at low energies. By loading deuterium into palladium and titanium foils, the team observed fusion rates up to a quintillion times higher than those occurring in bare reactions at energies below 2.5 keV.

This finding suggests that material environments act as active participants in nuclear reactions rather than passive containers. By engineering the electronic structure and composition of these materials, scientists may develop more efficient, compact neutron generators for medical, research, and security applications. This research establishes a new experimental framework for manipulating nuclear reactions through materials science.

UC Davis and Berkeley Lab researchers found the structure and composition of materials can dramatically increase how often fusion happens at low energies. This may help people design materials that improve fusion-based technologies.

Fusion at high temperatures powers the sun and, if harnessed, could provide a potential source of energy here on Earth. But controlling fusion reactions has other benefits. The process also generates subatomic particles called neutrons that are used in a range of applications spanning medicine, research, and national security.

Now, scientists at the University of California, Davis, and the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found that the materials surrounding a fusion reaction can dramatically increase how often it occurs, particularly at low energies where fusion is rare. Their study was published in Nature Communications.

Read the full article at UC Davis:
https://www.ucdavis.edu/blog/when-it-comes-fusion-materials-matter