Plasma is impossible to perfectly contain, so understanding how plasma affects materials is vital to harnessing its power.
Plasmas, both low-temperature (<10,000℃) and super hot (100,000,000℃), are great at altering whatever they touch, for better or worse. On one hand, low-temperature plasmas’ ability to modify surfaces is invaluable for tasks like prepping surfaces in semiconductor manufacturing (a process developed at the PSFC!). On the other, plasmas that are hot and energetic enough to fuse can badly damage the materials with which they interact, posing a big challenge for designing plasma fusion devices.
One way PSFC researchers study the durability of materials is by using particle accelerators to simulate the damage caused by plasma fusion conditions. Other researchers create simulations to describe how plasma flows and interacts with its environment, especially at the edges. Their results inform fusion device design and answer questions about the fundamental nature of all plasmas.
