Tiny Diamond Sphere Sparks Fusion Reaction For Carbon-Free Power

At 1:03 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 5, 2022, scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California aimed their 192-beam laser at a cylinder containing a tiny diamond fuel capsule.

Photo Insert: The next challenge for NIF and its partners will be to further improve tech in order to replicate and improve the reaction.

That powerful burst of laser light created immense temperatures and pressures and sparked a fusion reaction - the reaction which powers the sun—Carrie King reported for BBC News.

The NIF, part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, had done such experiments before, but this time the energy that came out of the reaction, was more than the laser power used to trigger it.

Scientists have been trying for decades to meet that threshold and the hope is, one day, to build power stations that employ a fusion reaction to generate abundant, carbon-free electricity.

Following December's successful experiment, the next challenge for NIF and its partners will be to further improve tech in order to replicate and improve the reaction.

One of the key components at NIF is a peppercorn-sized synthetic diamond capsule, which holds the fuel. The properties of that spherical capsule are crucial to creating a successful fusion experiment.

The sphere has to be perfectly smooth and contaminant-free - any anomalies could ruin the reaction. Those precisely engineered spheres are not made in California though.

They are the result of years of work by Diamond Materials, a company based in Freiburg, Germany.

"The demands on the spherical capsules are very high," says Christoph Wild who, alongside Eckhard Wörner, is managing director of Diamond Materials. "We collaborate closely with Lawrence Livermore and try to minimize defects like impurities, cavities or uneven walls."

The 25-strong team at Diamond Materials manufactures synthetic diamond through a process called chemical vapor deposition. A NIF fusion target contains a polished capsule about two millimeters in diameter, filled with cryogenic (super-cooled) hydrogen fuel.

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