Plasma Physics and Engineering for Fusion Research and other Applications

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Plasma Physics and Engineering for Fusion Research and other Applications -- Plasma is an ionized gas or the fourth state of matter. When a solid (such as ice) is successively heated, it will become liquid then gas. When more heat is added to the gas, the electrons usually belonging to certain atoms will be stripped off and become free electrons. This mixture of negative electrons, positive and negative ions, molecules and neutral particles is called a plasma. Plasma exists in nature, such as the burning surface of the sun, the aurora borealis, and lightning, as well as in man-made devices, such as in fluorescence light tubes and plasma TV screens. Other types of plasma devices are used for industrial applications. For example, all integrated circuit chips used in computers or cellphones must use plasma to etch fine and deep grooves. Plasmas are also used for thin film deposition or ion implantation for industrial and biomedical applications. The temperatures of the plasmas used for those purposes are relatively low. On the other end of the spectrum, hot plasmas are used to create a condition to extract fusion energy which uses abundant, practically inexhaustible fuels heated to hundreds of millions degrees in the fusion reactor core. Those hot and dense plasma fuels are primarily held together with strong magnetic fields within a vacuum chamber. The most promising device is called Tokamak. There are several issues that have hindered realization of the fusion energy reactors that offers safe energy source without carbon gas emission and with practically unlimited fuel from the sea water. For example, the confinement needs to be improved to achieve ignition condition for the reactor. The fuel has to be sent to the core of the reactor from outside. The materials used as the plasma facing components in the vacuum chamber must withstand high heat load as well as neutron bombardment from the fusion plasma. University of Saskatchewan operates the STOR-M tokamak, a compact torus injector, and a dense plasma focus (DPF) device. Those devices exist only at the University of Saskatchewan within Canada. The proposed research will be carried out on the two devices. STOR-M will be used to study plasma confinement, the Compact torus Injector will be used study the innovative fuel technology for tokamak reactors. The dense plasma focus device will be used as a testing facility to study the materials intended for fusion reactor components. On STOR-M, plasma confinement, plasma rotation speed will be studied. Improved confinement will help the tokamak to achieve the burning condition required for future fusion reactor and to improve the efficiency of the reactor. The University of Saskatchewan has conducted plasma research for over 40 years and used plasma for plasma aided material syntheses for over 20 years. The proposed research will help maintain Canadian expertise in fusion energy research and to train young talents.