Non-magnetic flexible heaters for spin-exchange optical pumping of 3He and other applications

Spin polarized3He gas is currently widely used in various scientific fields and in medical diagnosis applications. The spinpolarization of3He nuclei can be achieved by spin-exchangeoptical pumping (SEOP). In SEOP, the3He gas is enclosed in a glass cell together withalkali metals and is then heated to maintain thealkali metal vapor pressures at the appropriate levels. However, polarized3He gas is highly sensitive to any inhomogeneity in itsmagnetic field, and any small field gradients caused by theheaters may cause degradation of the3Hepolarization. To overcome this conflict between the heating process and themagnetic field, we have developed electricalheaters that essentially cause nomagnetic fields. Theseheaters are thin and are flexible enough to be bent to within a radius of a few centimeters. These carefully designedheater elements and a double layer structure effectively eliminatemagnetic field generation. Theheaters were originally developed for SEOP applications, but can also be applied to other processes that need to avoid unwantedmagnetic fields.

Source: Review of Scientific Instruments - November 10, 2016 Category: Physics Authors: T. Ino, H. Hayashida, H. Kira, T. Oku and K. Sakai Source Type: research