Our heartiest congratulations to Shamma Almazrouei, a team member at our Directed Energy Research Center (DERC), who won the Best Oral Presentation Award for her speech titled “Chromium Doped Tungsten Alloy for Plasma-Facing Components Formed by Compression Plasma Flows”, at the 11th Global Conference on Material Sciences and Engineering (CMSE 2022), which ran from September 16-19 in Shenzhen, China.
Almazrouei’s extensive research and eloquent presentation of the topic at the conference’s Oral Session 2: Metals, Ceramics, Composites, Polymers garnered much praise from her peers and organizers and even secured her a free-to-register invitation to CMSE 2023, a leading global conference that covers all theoretical and experimental aspects of materials science and engineering.
CMSE 2022 provides an international academic platform for researchers and scholars to present their latest findings, and to facilitate networking and in-depth discussion with peers from different countries.
In her speech, Almazrouei explored the chromium doped tungsten (Cr-W) alloys for plasma-facing components (PFCs) of fusion reactors formed by compression plasma flows (CPFs) treatment at different absorbed energy densities. She investigated the structural and mechanical properties of the formed Cr-W alloys to assess their suitability for plasma-facing materials in ITER and DEMO. The plasma-facing materials must support high heat loads and high fluencies of neutron and ion irradiation. The study reveals that Cr-W alloys can be used to construct PFCs, which can withstand high thermal loads and face the plasma in the fusion reactors. Furthermore, PFCs based on Cr-W alloys are superior to that of pure tungsten despite tungsten’s high melting point, low hydrogen isotope retention, and high resistance to sputtering. Because tungsten’s acute brittleness, low formability, and high brittle to ductile transition temperature (BDTT) can cause radiation damage, and the use of tungsten in fusion reactors could produce radioactive and highly volatile oxide compounds. Almazrouei’s extensive research on CPFs treatment under different conditions will help to obtain Cr-W alloys with desired properties suitable for PFCs.
As a key driver of directed energy systems and technologies, DERC works closely with a community of globally renowned scientists and engineers to create a unique research environment that accelerates theoretical advancements and practical breakthroughs for the betterment of society.
We are proud of Shamma Almazrouei’s achievement and wish her many more industry accolades in the coming years!