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

在过去的几十年里，我们努力为特殊用途的先进材料制造。这些应用的一部分使用暴露在恶劣条件下的材料，例如暴露在高能密度影响下的材料，例如在高能密度/天体物理学、航空航天应用（包括飞机工业）或能源生产中。如果想要确保系统的安全运行并防止可能造成毁灭性后果的故障，在这些材料投入生产之前测试它们的应力是至关重要的。目前，在实验室中模拟的材料应力测试是基于高能（常规）粒子束辐照材料，模拟沉积能量和测试材料的每原子位移（dpa）。这些方法的缺点是它们的实现时间长，与较高的成本和较长的等待时间相关，并且它们在为某些非常特定的应用程序再现实时场景方面存在限制。本提案旨在进行一项与基于激光加速质子的新型材料压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更短的束长（通常在源处为ps），非常高的通量（通常每束10e13个粒子）和大的粒子能谱（范围可达几MeV）的优势。我们已经证明，这些特性允许激光产生的粒子对材料产生更高的应力，因为短束持续时间不允许材料恢复。因此，使用这种新颖的光源可以进行不同的改进，例如：1)更快，因为它可以用几个单个次ps激光射击来执行；2)效率更高，因为它能够在更短的时间内再现材料在恶劣环境（例如反应器）中相当典型的操作时间；3)更紧凑，更方便；4)更通用，因为它允许在各种条件下进行压力测试，包括那些用传统方法很难甚至不可能重现的条件。我们坚信，对这项新技术进行市场研究是非常及时的，并将有助于促进创新

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.**