The United States of America As Represented by the United States

National Technology & Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC

The United States of America As Represented by the Department of Energy

William R Wampler

Robert C Hughes

Barney L Doyle

Robert J Bastasz

Clark S Snow

A novel thin-film target can the life of tritium targets for the production of 14 MeV neutrons by theH(H,n)He nuclear reaction while using only a small fraction of the amount of tritium compared to a standard thick-film target. With the thin-film target, the incident deuterium is implanted through the front tritide film into the underlying substrate material. A thin permeation barrier layer between the tritide film and substrate reduces the rate of tritium loss from the tritide film. As an example, good thin-film target performance was achieved using W and Fe for the barrier and substrate materials, respectively.

Thin-film target for DT neutron production

A detector for detecting energetic hydrogen ions and atoms ranging in energy from about 1 eV up to 1 keV in an evacuated environment includes a Schottky diode with a palladium or palladium-alloy gate metal applied to a silicondioxide layer on an n-silicon substrate. An array of the energetic-hydrogen detectors having a range of energy sensitivities form a plasma energy analyzer having a rapid response time and a sensitivity for measuring fluxes of energetic hydrogen. The detector is sensitive to hydrogen and its isotopes but is insensitive to non-hydrogenic particles. The array of energetic-hydrogen detectors can be formed on a single silicon chip, with thin-film layers of gold metal applied in various thicknesses to successive detectors in the array. The gold layers serve as particle energy-filters so that each detector is sensitive to a different range of hydrogen energies.

Detector and energy analyzer for energetic-hydrogen in beams and plasmas

A probe for determining the energy and flux of particles in a plasma comprises a carbon film adapted to be exposed to the plasma, the film havinmg an electrical resistance which is related to the number of particles impacting the film, contacts for passing an electrical current through the film, and contacts for determining the electrical resistance of the film. An improved method for determining the energy or flux of particles in a plasma is also disclosed.

Growing community of inventors

Albuquerque, NM, United States of America

William R Wampler