Desktop "Crystal Fusion"

It’s been long since I have posted any blog here, sorry for that but today I have a good story to be told it’s about another Tech Findings. Friends this is about a great development at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Researchers here have developed a tabletop accelerator that produces nuclear fusion at room temperature using 'crystal fusion', it is simpler, less expensive and it has the potential to produce even more neutrons than the previous version. Two opposing "pyroelectric" crystals that create a strong electric field when heated or cooled, it is filled with deuterium gas (almost similar to hydrogen, but has more electrons). The electric field rips electrons from the gas, creating deuterium ions and accelerating them into a deuterium target on one of the crystals. The particles smash into the target, neutrons are emitted, which is the shows that nuclear fusion has occurred.

A similar device was developed by a research team UCLA in 2005. The two major advantages of the new device are:

1. It has two crystals compared to one in the previous version. This makes it doubles the acceleration potential.
2. The new device does not require cooling of crystals which means that it is not only cost effective but also simple to develop.

The device, which uses two opposing crystals to generate a powerful electric field, could potentially lead to a portable, battery-operated neutron generator for a variety of applications, from non-destructive testing to detecting explosives and scanning luggage at airports. This can be implemented as a substitute to the heavy batteries for various devices. We can expect an efficient batteries that are very light weight and more efficient that the ones available these days. This concept can also be used to develop portable X-Ray generator. There is already a commercial portable pyroelectric x-ray product available, but it does not produce enough energy to provide the 50,000 electron volts needed for medical imaging whereas the new device is capable of producing about 2,00,000 electron volts, which could meet these requirements and could also be enough to penetrate several millimeters of steel. In the future this concept can also be used to treat cancer.