October 2020 with CPMI

Professor Ruzic was awarded with the 2020 AVS Gaede-Langmuir Award during the remotely celebrated 67th Annual Meeting of the American Vacuum Society (AVS) 27-29 October 2020. He gave the opening invited Lecture titled “How Advances in High-Power Magnetron Impulse Sputtering (HiPIMS) can control Ion Energy, Ionization, and have High Deposition Rates”, outlining the research in this area developed at CPMI.  Regarding the SBIR project with Micro Cooling Inc., internal meetings with the DOE representative presenting the main plans for the collaborative task between UIUC and the company occured. Last, designs of the crucible and microtrenched samples were conducted in collaboration with UIUC. The laboratory expects to receive samples from the company soon and experimental systems are ready to start studies with the wetting test. 

Works in HIDRA continued to begin operation for the Lab classes and planning on conducting experiments with plasmas and lithium sample exposure. Meetings to define the scope of the works for the new research collaboration with GF took place. The proposal contemplates to study the compatibility of advanced coatings with liquid lithium under dynamic erosion/corrosion environment, basic science questions with lead lithium as vapor pressure and segregation as well as ideas involving the use of lithium floating into liquid led lithium are included. Second round of material testing for the company was successfully completed during the complete time scale of the experiment (100 h). Characterization of surface and tensile stress effects analyses are ongoing. 

3D microscopy characterization of one of the samples studied in the project with General Fusion