Experimental Study on Deuterium-Deuterium Thermonuclear Fusion with Interface Confinement

Abstract

Nuclear fusion is recognized as the energy of the future, and huge efforts and capitals have been put into the research of controlled nuclear fusion in the past decades. The most challenging thing for controlled nuclear fusion is to generate and keep a super high temperature. Here, a sonication system, combining with micro-scale fluid control techniques, was built to generate cavitation within a limited region. As bubbles being rapidly compressed, high temperature plasma generated interior leads to particle emissions, where a Cs2LiYCl6: Ce3+ (CLYC) scintillator was used to collect the emission events. The pulse shape discrimination methods applied on captured signals revealed that only gamma ray events were observed in sonication with normal water as excepted, while obvious separation of neutron and gamma ray events was surprisingly identified in sonication with deuterated water. This result suggested that neutrons were emitted from the sonicated deuterated water, i.e. deuterium-deuterium thermonuclear fusion was initiated. This study provides an alternative and feasible approach to achieve controllable nuclear fusion and makes great sense for future researches on the application of fusion energy.