First Inertial Confinement Fusion Implosion Experiment in Octahedral Spherical Hohlraum.

In inertial confinement approaches to fusion, the asymmetry of target implosion is a major obstacle to achieving high gain in the laboratory. A recently proposed octahedral spherical hohlraum makes it possible to naturally create spherical target irradiation without supplementary symmetry control. Before any decision is made to pursue an ignition-scale laser system based on the octahedral hohlraum, one needs to test the concept with the existing facilities. Here, we report a proof-of-concept experiment for the novel octahedral hohlraum geometry on the cylindrically configured SGIII laser facility without a symmetry control. All polar and equatorial self-emission images of the compressed target show a near round shape of convergence ratio 15 under both square and shaped laser pulses. The observed implosion performances agree well with the ideal spherical implosion simulation. It also shows limitations with using the existing facilities and adds further weight to the need to move to a spherical port geometry for future ignition laser facilities.

Extreme Fast Charging of Lithium Metal Batteries Enabled by a Molten-Salt-Derived Nanocrystal Interphase.

The extreme fast charging performance of lithium metal batteries (LMBs) with a long life is an important focus in the development of next-generation battery technologies. The friable solid electrolyte interphase and dendritic lithium growth are major problems. The formation of an inorganic nanocrystal-dominant interphase produced by preimmersing the Li in molten lithium bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide that suppresses the overgrowth of the usual interphase is reported. Its high surface modulus combined with fast Li+ diffusivity enables a reversible dendrite-proof deposition under ultrahigh-rate conditions. It gives a record-breaking cumulative plating/stripping capacity of >240 000 mAh cm-2 at 30 mA cm-2@30 mAh cm-2 for a symmetric cell and an extreme fast charging performance at 6 C for 500 cycles for a Li||LiCoO2 full cell with a high-areal-capacity, thus expanding the use of LMBs to high-loading and power-intensive scenarios. Its usability both in roll-to-roll production and in different electrolytes indicating the scalable and industrial potential of this process for high-performance LMBs.

Chunk mixing implosion experiments using deuterated foam capsules with gold dopant.

To study the effects of chunk mixing, the implosion experiments using capsules filled with deuterated foam (CDF capsule) were carried out on the Shenguang laser facility. Three types of the CDF capsules, namely the capsules without Au dopant, with micrometer Au dopant, and with atomic Au dopant, were used in the experiments. The neutron yields, the size, and the emission intensity of the hotspots were measured. The CDF capsules without Au dopant produced the highest neutron yield and the largest hotspot size at the time of peak emission. The capsules with micrometer or atomic Au dopant showed similar reduced neutron yield and hotspot size. The time-resolved hotspot emissions showed different behaviors between different capsules. One-dimensional simulations were carried out to understand the implosion dynamics of the CDF capsule without Au dopant, and to provide the thermodynamic conditions that the Au dopant would experience during the implosion. The effects of Au dopant were then discussed qualitatively.