EMREL awarded $2.5M from Department of Energy for a project on developing Ultra-High Temperature Ceramics
October 2024

A Stony Brook University project led by Professors Lance Snead and David Sprouster was selected to receive $2.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) CHADWICK program to develop tougher, longer-lasting “first wall” materials for fusion power plants. The team will work with MIT, the University of Tennessee–Knoxville, and Sandia National Laboratories to develop ceramic materials with increased ductility, thermal conductivity, and irradiation resistance.

The full text may be found here.

Devanshi's paper, Fabrication of neutron absorbing metal hydride entrained ceramic matrix shield composites, was published in Frontiers in Nuclear Engineering.
February 2024

Here, we present a manufacturing method to fabricate a new class of composite shields that are high performance, high operating temperature, and simultaneously neutron absorbing and neutron moderating. The composite design consists of an entrained metal-hydride phase within a radiation stable MgO ceramic host matrix. We discuss the fabrication, characterization, and thermophysical performance data for a series of down-selected composite materials inspired by future fusion core designs and their operational performance metrics. To our knowledge these materials represent the first ceramic composite shield materials containing significant metal hydrides.

The full text may be found here.