The basic principle of Laser Assisted Plasma Coating at Atmospheric Pressure (LAPCAP) is to utilize a pulsed ND:YAG laser (t= 5~10 ns, with the intensity of 10^10~10^11 W/cm^2) to knock the atomic particles from the target and feed into the inductively coupled low temperature RF or microwave atmopheric plasma to further increase the efficiency of [...]

The plasma facing components in fusion reactors are subject to a number of high flux/high energy events during normal operation of the device. The Divertor Edge and Vapor shielding eXperiment (DEVeX) was developed to produce a pulsed, high density, high temperature plasmas capable of simulating the conditions in events such as type I Edge Localized [...]

IIAX bombards surfaces with a low-energy ion beam and monitors the material’s response to quantify its physical properties. The current research is investigating the effects of plasma-wall interactions based on the NSTX experiment, in which a lithium coating is evaporated on the plasma wetted surfaces (walls of ATJ graphite), which has been noted to reduce [...]

Innovative materials are created every year as candidates for fusion first-walls and the like. One such material is a porous molybdenum foam specifically proposed to hold a volume of liquid lithium within a fusion experiment. The SLIP experiment was created to examine the wetting behavior of this foam. Its follow-up experiment, SLIP2X, is a plasma [...]

The SLiDE experiment is designed to study surface tension driven flows in fusion relevant magnetic fields and conditions. With the conclusion of the liquid lithium helium retention experiments at UIUC, a new experiment is being planned to study new effects which may impact divertor and limiter designs of future fusion devices. The CDX-U experiment at [...]

One plentiful source of energy is thermonuclear fusion, which is the same source of energy that our sun has been using for billions of years. To achieve nuclear fusion we need to heat and confine Deuterium and Tritium atoms (heavy hydrogen) so that they can overcome the repulsive Coulomb forces. Plasmas have to be generated [...]