Laser-accelerated patricle beams for stress testing of materials (market study)

在过去的几十年里，人们为非常特定的应用而努力开发先进的材料制造。这些应用的一部分使用暴露于苛刻条件的材料，例如暴露于高能量密度注量时，例如在高能量密度/天体物理学，航空航天应用（包括飞机工业）或能源生产中。如果要确保系统的安全运行并防止可能造成破坏性后果的故障，则在这些材料投入生产之前对其进行应力测试至关重要。目前，在实验室中模拟的材料应力测试是基于用高能（常规）粒子束辐照材料，其模拟测试材料的沉积能量和每原子位移（dpa）。这些方法的缺点是它们的长的实现时间，与较高的成本和长的等待时间相关联，以及它们在再现用于一些非常特定的应用的真实的时间场景方面的限制。该提案旨在进行与基于激光加速质子的新材料应力测试技术的开发和商业化相关的市场研究。基于激光的质子加速具有以下优点：具有短得多的聚束长度（通常在源处为ps）、非常高的通量（通常每聚束10 e13粒子）和大的粒子能谱（范围高达几MeV）。我们已经表明，这些属性允许激光产生的粒子，以诱导更高的应力到材料中，因为短的聚束持续时间不允许材料的恢复。因此，使用这种新颖的源允许不同的改进，例如1）快得多，因为它可以用几个单个亚ps激光发射来执行; 2）更有效，因为它能够在恶劣环境中再现材料的相当大的典型操作时间（例如反应器）在短得多的时间内; 3）更紧凑且更容易获得; 4）更通用，因为它允许在各种条件下进行压力测试，包括那些难以甚至不可能通过传统方法重现的条件。我们坚信，这项新技术的市场研究非常及时，将有助于促进创新。

In the last decades, strong effort is put into the advanced manufacturing of materials for very specific applications. Part of these applications use materials exposed to harsh conditions such as when exposed to high-energy density fluence, e.g. in high-energy density/astrophysics, aero spatial applications (including aircraft industry), or energy production. Testing the stress of these materials before they go into production is of vital importance if one wants to ensure a safe operation of the system and prevent failures that can have devastating consequences. Currently, material stress tests simulated in laboratories are based on the irradiation of materials with high energetic (conventional) particle beams, which simulate the deposited energy and the displacements per atoms (dpa) of a testing material. A drawback of these methods is their long implementation time, associated with higher costs and long waiting times, and their limit in reproducing the real time scenario for some very specific applications. This proposal aims at performing a market study related to development and commercialization of a new Material Stress-testing technique based on laser-accelerated protons. Laser-based proton acceleration has the advantage of having a much shorter bunch length (typically it is ps at the source), a very high flux (typically 10e13 particles per bunch) and a large particle energy spectrum (ranging up to a few MeV). We have shown that these properties allow the laser-generated particles to induce a much higher stress into the materials since the short bunch duration does not allow the material for recovery. As such, using this novel source allows for different improvements such as being 1) much faster, since it can be performed with a few single sub-ps laser-shots; 2) more efficient, since it is able to reproduce a considerable typical operational time of the material in harsh environment (e.g. reactor) in a much shorter time; 3) more compact and more accessible; 4) more versatile, since it allows stress tests in various conditions, including those that are difficult or even impossible to reproduce by conventional methods. We strongly believe that a market study for this new technology is extremely timely and will contribute to foster innovation.**