News

Every generation wishes to see the young and developing succeed. As CPMI is a closely knit family, we are proud to announce that, through hard work and dedication, a few of our PhD candidates (soon to be PhD graduates) are heading toward a bright future. Zihao Ouyang, and Liang Meng have acquired positions with Lam Research and John Sporre will be working with IBM. We wish them good luck.

CPMI is pleased to welcome Dr. Logan Liu from the Electrical Engineering department. Dr. Ruzic, CPMI’s Director, and Dr. Liu will be submitting a joint SRI proposal.

On February 16th, CPMI Director Dr. David Ruzic held his 26th annual Chili Cookoff. Over 95 people were in attendance and over 33 different chilis were served.  A good time was had by all.

Daniel Andruczyk, one of CPMI’s Research Engineers employed at Princeton’s Plasma Physics Lab returned to Champaign this week. He brought along a fast framing camera, which was extremely useful in additional experiments. We look forward to future visits from Dan.

CPMI was visisted by one our alumni this week, as Shailendra Srivastava now employed at Cymer/ASML stopped by our laboratory.

The CPMI family would like to extend their congratulations to Liang Meng who became a proud father on Tuesday, November 6th with the birth of his daughter, Evie Lu Meng.

Last week the CPMI Director, David Ruzic, was awarded the prestigious “Plasma Prize” from the Plasma Science and Technology Division of the American Vacuum Society.  It is awarded once per year to a recognized leader in the field. The citation reads, “For his pioneering contributions to the science of processing plasmas and the societal benefits of plasma technology.”  Congratulations to Professor Ruzic for garnering such an honor.

Congratulations to CPMI graduate research assistant Peter R. Fiflis,  awarded with an Office of Science Graduate Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Energy!

http://npre.illinois.edu/news/fiflis-gains-doe-fellowship-plasmafusion-studies

John Sporre and David Ruzic, “Debris transport analysis at the intermediate focus of an extreme ultraviolet light source” J. Micro/Nanolith. MEMS MOEMS 11(2), 021117 (Apr–Jun 2012).

(2012) J.R. Sporre and D. Ruzic

Today it was announced that CPMI’s David Ruzic and hie liquid lithium group has been awarded a grant under the Department of Energies Materials solicitation. The grant is to study Thermoelectric-Driven Liquid-Lithium Plasma-Facing structures (TELS) which will bring together the work being done in SLiDE and DEVeX with Davids LiMIT concept.

SLiDE (Solid/Liquid Lithium Divertor Experiment) is a current project that uses an electron beam to test liquid metal plasma facing components (PFCs) under a constant heat flux similar to those found in Fusion devices. This is the primary facility used to test the Lithium/Metal Infused Trenches (LiMIT) concept currently.

The Divertor Erosion and Vapor shielding eXperiment (DEVeX) facility is able to simulate the types of plasma’s as seen in a fusion reactor when there is an instability such as an Edge Localized mode. It also looks at lithium’s ability to shield a surface from the power flux that is incident on the surface.

TELS will bring both of these machines together to be able to test PFC components under not only steady state power fluxes as seen in fusion devices but at the same time test how they behave when there is a major pulsed disruption incident on the surface or an instability such as an Edge Localized mode (ELM). This is a vital study for fusion to make it viable since its is critical that PFC componetes can survive the harsh enviroments that are present inside a fusion reactor. TELS will go a long way in answering many of the question that scientists have about lithium’s viability as a liquid metal PFC and testing different design for liquid PFCs as well as have the ability to test other materials of interest for the first wall and divertor in a fusion reactor. The grant funding is for three years.

I am sure that you all will warmly congratulate David and his team of Post-docs students and research engineer that have worked hard to get this proposal funded.