Enhancement of Voltage, Ion current and Neutron Yield in Pyroelectric Accelerators

TL;DR

This paper presents a modified pyroelectric accelerator design that significantly enhances voltage, ion current, and neutron yield by optimizing the structure to leverage high pyrocoefficient materials, overcoming previous limitations.

Contribution

The study introduces a new PEA configuration that decouples voltage and electric field from dielectric constant, enabling higher ion and neutron yields with high pyrocoefficient materials.

Findings

Achieved highest attainable voltage and ion current in modified PEA

Demonstrated increased neutron yields with high pyrocoefficient materials

Proved electric field and voltage are proportional to pyrocoefficient p, independent of dielectric constant e

Abstract

Utilization of current pyroelectric accelerators (PEA) is limited due to low ion current and neutron generation yields. Current design, using pyroelectrics (PE) with high pyrocoefficient (p), having high dielectric constant (e), limits the figure-of-merit. We present detailed analysis of a modified structure of PEA, providing the highest attainable voltage and ion current. In the paired configuration, using metal plates covering the polar faces, with grounded back plates, the accelerating voltage and electric field are proportional to p and do not depend on e. Therefore, in the modified structure, PE with high p significantly increases the ion and neutron yields.