High Voltage Power Supplies
One particularly interesting approach for generating the high voltage fields needed to accelerate ions in a neutron tube is to use a pyroelectric crystal. In April 2005 researchers at UCLA demonstrated the use of a thermally cycled pyroelectric crystal to generate high electric fields in a neutron generator application. In February 2006 researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute demonstrated the use of two oppositely poled crystals for this application. Using these low-tech power supplies it is possible to generate a sufficiently high electric field gradient across an accelerating gap to accelerate deuterium ions into a deuterated target to produce the D + D fusion reaction. These devices are similar in their operating principle to conventional sealed-tube neutron generators which typically use Cockcroft–Walton type high voltage power supplies. The novelty of this approach is in the simplicity of the high voltage source. Unfortunately, the relatively low accelerating current that pyroelectric crystals can generate, together with the modest pulsing frequencies that can be achieved (a few cycles per minute) limits their near-term application in comparison with today's commercial products (see below). Also see pyroelectric fusion.
Read more about this topic: Neutron Generator
Famous quotes containing the words high, power and/or supplies:
“So having said, a while he stood, expecting
Their universal shout and high applause
To fill his ear; when contrary, he hears,
On all sides, from innumerable tongues
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“The power of the past does not depend on our knowledge of it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“There were three classes of inhabitants who either frequent or inhabit the country which we had now entered: first, the loggers, who, for a part of the year, the winter and spring, are far the most numerous, but in the summer, except for a few explorers for timber, completely desert it; second, the few settlers I have named, the only permanent inhabitants, who live on the verge of it, and help raise supplies for the former; third, the hunters, mostly Indians, who range over it in their season.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)