High-throughput Down-selection of Fusion Candidate Materials
Abstract
Developing radiation-resistant fusion reactor materials is constrained by the slow pace of conventional irradiation qualification methodologies, which usually require extensive one-at-a-time irradiation campaigns and post-irradiation characterization. At the current pace of development, we may not discover the materials necessary to deploy fusion power plants at desired rates. In this work, we present a high-throughput (HT) experimental framework for the accelerated down-selection of fusion-relevant, Cu-Cr-Ta RF antenna materials by integrating combinatorial synthesis, in situ ion irradiation, and multi-property screening within a unified workflow. A 2D compositional Cu-Cr-Ta gradient wafer was fabricated by physical vapor deposition and characterized using in situ ion irradiation transient grating spectroscopy I3TGS. Radiation-induced surface acoustic wave frequency fluctuations were used as a rapid proxy for primary defect accumulation, while thermal diffusivity measurements were obtained simultaneously during irradiation. Complementary HT characterization included EDS compositional mapping, four-point probe electrical resistivity measurements, and waste disposal rating calculations to evaluate long-term activation behavior. This integrated methodology enabled an acceleration with respect to conventional irradiation approaches by more than 100 times, from months to hours to analyze 78 new materials.
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BibTeX
@misc{boticaartalejo2026highthroughput,
title = {{High-throughput Down-selection of Fusion Candidate Materials}},
author = {Elena Botica-Artalejo and Josh Randolph and Kevin B. Woller and Gregory Wallace and Michael P. Short},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.28232},
eprint = {2610.28232},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.28232},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - High-throughput Down-selection of Fusion Candidate Materials
AU - Elena Botica-Artalejo
AU - Josh Randolph
AU - Kevin B. Woller
AU - Gregory Wallace
AU - Michael P. Short
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/20
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.28232
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.28232
AB - Developing radiation-resistant fusion reactor materials is constrained by the slow pace of conventional irradiation qualification methodologies, which usually require extensive one-at-a-time irradiation campaigns and post-irradiation characterization. At the current pace of development, we may not discover the materials necessary to deploy fusion power plants at desired rates. In this work, we present a high-throughput (HT) experimental framework for the accelerated down-selection of fusion-relevant, Cu-Cr-Ta RF antenna materials by integrating combinatorial synthesis, in situ ion irradiation, and multi-property screening within a unified workflow. A 2D compositional Cu-Cr-Ta gradient wafer was fabricated by physical vapor deposition and characterized using in situ ion irradiation transient grating spectroscopy I3TGS. Radiation-induced surface acoustic wave frequency fluctuations were used as a rapid proxy for primary defect accumulation, while thermal diffusivity measurements were obtained simultaneously during irradiation. Complementary HT characterization included EDS compositional mapping, four-point probe electrical resistivity measurements, and waste disposal rating calculations to evaluate long-term activation behavior. This integrated methodology enabled an acceleration with respect to conventional irradiation approaches by more than 100 times, from months to hours to analyze 78 new materials.
ER -