Fabrication of hollow poly(alpha‐methylstyrene) shells for inertial confinement fusion targets

Abstract

AbstractOne of the important technical problems of Inertial Confinement Fusion is the development of a technology for obtaining large batches of targets‐containers for hydrogen isotopes. At the first stage of production of targets, spherical polymer shell‐matrices are used. In this work, for the first time, a method is proposed for obtaining batches of spherical shells from high molecular mass poly(alpha‐methylstyrene) using the developed set of equipment. To obtain batches of shells with a high degree of sphericity 0.992–0.997, the optimal conditions for their production and the composition of the equipment complex were determined. The surface quality of the shells and the uniformity of their walls were determined by electron microscopy. To estimate the degree of sphericity of polymeric shells, statistical calculations of data obtained by photo‐registering of different batches of shells were performed. Batches of spherical shells 2.1 ± 0.05 mm in size were obtained.