Development of a linear compressor for compact 2 K Gifford- McMahon cryocoolers

Abstract

Recently, a new, compact Gifford-McMahon (GM) cryocooler for cooling superconducting single photon detectors (SSPD) has been developed at Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Ltd. (SHI) [1, 2]. The objective is to reduce the total height of the expander by 33% relative to the existing RDK-101 GM expander and to reduce the total volume of the compressor unit by 50% relative to the existing CNA-11 compressor. In addition, considering the targeted cooling application, we set the design temperature targets of the first and the second stages to 1 W and 20 mW of heat load at 60 K and 2.3 K, respectively. Although optimization of the internal components is one way to miniaturize the volume of the compressor unit, major design changes are required because the volume of the adsorber and the oil separator is almost the same as the volume of the compressor capsule. Thus, one approach is to develop a non-lubricated compressor, such as a valved linear compressor. An experimental unit of a valved linear compressor was designed and built, and preliminary experiments were conducted. Under no-load condition, a low temperature of 2.19 K has been achieved. With 1 W and 14 mW heat load, the temperature is 48 K at the first stage and 2.3 K at the second stage, with an input power of about 1.2 KW. The detailed experimental results will be discussed in this paper.