Plasma Physics and Engineering for Fusion Research and other Applications

用于聚变研究和其他应用的等离子体物理和工程——等离子体是一种电离气体或物质的第四态。当固体（如冰）被连续加热时，它先变成液体，然后变成气体。当气体中加入更多的热量时，通常属于某些原子的电子就会被剥离出来，变成自由电子。这种由负电子、正离子和负离子、分子和中性粒子组成的混合物被称为等离子体。等离子体存在于自然界中，如太阳的燃烧表面、北极光和闪电，也存在于人造设备中，如荧光灯管和等离子电视屏幕。其他类型的等离子装置用于工业应用。例如，所有用于电脑或手机的集成电路芯片都必须使用等离子体来蚀刻细而深的凹槽。等离子体也用于薄膜沉积或离子注入工业和生物医学应用。用于这些目的的等离子体的温度相对较低。在光谱的另一端，热等离子体被用来创造一个条件来提取聚变能，这种能量使用的是在聚变反应堆堆芯中加热到数亿度的丰富的、几乎取之不尽的燃料。这些热而致密的等离子体燃料主要是在真空室的强磁场下结合在一起的。最有前途的装置叫做托卡马克。核聚变反应堆提供了没有碳气体排放的安全能源，并且几乎可以从海水中获得无限的燃料，但目前有几个问题阻碍了核聚变反应堆的实现。例如，需要改进约束以达到反应堆的点火条件。燃料必须从外部送到反应堆的核心。在真空室中用作等离子体面组件的材料必须承受高热负荷以及来自聚变等离子体的中子轰击。

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.