Materials properties measurements and particle beam interactions studies using electrostatic levitation

Publication date: February 2014 Source:Materials Science and Engineering: R: Reports, Volume 76 Author(s): Paul-François Paradis , Takehiko Ishikawa , Geun-Woo Lee , Dirk Holland-Moritz , Jürgen Brillo , Won-Kyu Rhim , Junpei T. Okada Electrostatic levitators have been around for more than 30 years and have become mature tools for the material science community. Originally developed as positioners for materials and fluid science experiments in space, they saw a myriad of offsprings throughout the world for ground-based research, not only in space agencies but also in governmental laboratories, in universities and in the industry. Electrostatic levitators eliminate any physical contact with a container allowing to process and study corrosive or high temperature materials in their solid or liquid phases. Moreover, heterogeneous contamination from the container being avoided, it is possible to reach and maintain supercooled and metastable phases. This, in turns, permits a host of fundamental and applied studies. The nucleation and solidification phenomena can be scrutinized, the atomic structure and dynamic of liquid and metastable phases can be probed and the physics of molten drops could be investigated. On a more applied standpoint, the measure of thermophysical properties and the synthesis of materials with new properties are also possible with current facilities. This paper first describes the principle of electrostatic levitation and retraces the development o...

Source: Materials Science and Engineering: R: Reports - October 12, 2014 Category: Materials Science Source Type: research