New Anode Materials for High Lethality HPM Sources

Abstract

This proposal requests support for a three year period project to carry out fundamental research directly tied to the advancement of, effective high lethality HPM sources. It involves developing anode materials that reduce the number of adsorbates on the surface w,hich can limit both the repetition rate of HPM sources and the pulse length. It is not known a priori if long pulse or high repetit,ion sources will have a greater effect on the target - this needs to be tested. What is known is that electromagnetic energy is requ,ired to affect a target, and designing electrodes with lower adsorbate load will increase the energy and hence, very likely, the let,hality of HPM sources. This work is multipronged and has at its heart a novel idea, for which we will apply for a patent on reducin,g the adsorbate load content. In one part of this collaborative research project, the nature, ionization level of these neutrals wi,ll be determined by careful experimental measurements of the adsorbate loadon cathode and anode materials on UNMs LTD test bed by ut,ilizing time and spatially resolved diagnostics. A second parallel part will involve Molecular Dynamics (MD), Monte Carlo and first, principle atomic physics Density Functional Theory (DFT) simulations on the likely hydrogen content on these materials and how thes,e will be reduced via shock loading of the first few monolayers of the material. This parallel paired collaborative proposal is bet,ween Dr. Salvador Portillo at the University of New Mexico (UNM) and Dr. Ravi Joshi at Texas Tech University (TTU). UNM will lead th,e experimental effort, and TTU will lead the material numerical simulations for quantitative predictions, experimental validation an,d optimization.

Document Details

Document Type
DoD Grant Award
Publication Date
Jul 11, 2022
Source ID
N000142212483

Entities

People

  • Ravindra Joshi

Organizations

  • Office of Naval Research
  • Texas Tech University System
  • United States Navy

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Electrical Engineering
  • Electrochemical Engineering/ Fuel Cell Technologies
  • Research Science/Academic Research