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Research of the Materials Engineering (ME) Department of IPP focuses on study of materials after their interaction with plasma. There are various changes happening to materials interacting with plasma. Such changes make difficult the selection of materials for construction elements and plasma facing components of tokamaks (fusion reactors). The plasma in this case constitutes a problem and a material challenge. On the other hand, the changes in materials can be utilized for substantial modifications of conventional materials – their surfaces in particular or for fabrication of new types of materials with specific properties. In this second case, plasma constitutes a working tool.
The ME department is one of the few laboratories in the world dealing with both topics: study of materials exposed to high-temperature plasma of tokamaks and also the plasma sprayed coatings prepared by thermal plasma. The ME dept. carries out research and development of special functional graded materials (FGMs) that could serve as plasma-facing components in tokamaks and sufficiently remove heat. We have a unique opportunity of exposing real material samples to fusion-relevant tokamak plasma in the Compass tokamak at IPP. We can also fabricate our own FGMs by plasma spraying.
Plasma spraying at the ME dept. is done by the world unique Water Stabilized Plasma guns (WSP® and WSPH®) with water or hybrid stabilization that were developed in our institute. Materials in the form of powder, suspension, or solution are fed into a plasma jet, where various reactions take place, to be deposited onto a substrate. We can produce protective coatings from both metal and ceramic materials and their mixtures, or coatings with specific physical properties (dielectrics, photocatalytic, etc.) or produce thin-walled ceramic parts.
Another technique used for material fabrication is the Spark plasma sintering also called Field Assisted Sintering Technique. This technique uses pulsed electric current and increased pressure to sinter metallic and non-metallic powders. It is a great tool for fabrication of ultrafine-grained materials and FGMs in considerably short times. All fabricated materials are subjected to a thorough characterization going from phase analysis, microstructure, to mechanical and selected physical properties. All experimental studies in the ME dept. are carried out in a wide international network of collaborating institutions and are also supported by theoretical computations and modeling.
For more details you can check our Research Topics or a more detailed description of our activities.
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