High Throughput Vacuum Chamber

Building a high throughput vacuum chamber for our group’s transient grading spectroscopy (TGS) project, which uses picosecond, ultrasonic laster acoustics to probe the sub-surface, thermo-elastic properties of materials. We are particularly interested to study the thermal diffusivity of material under irradiation, which requires probe depths of single microns conducted in vacuum. Our current chamber is small, fragile, and restricted in sample size & throughput. We often need to analyze many similarly irradiated materials in vacuum, and having a larger, optically transparent vacuum chamber to do so will greatly increase the throughput of out experiments. Once completed, it will be used to study the performance of alumina coatings on Zircaloys as potential accident tolerant fuel cladding for light water reactors, in addition to comparing the changes in thermal transport in irradiated SiC and FeCrSi alloys under ion and neutron irradiation.

Faculty Supervisor:

William Kieser

Student:

Partner:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Education

University:

University of Ottawa

Program: