Cold Facts Digital – The go-to place for Cryogenics and Superconductivity

HiLumi LHC: cryogenics equipment arrives underground

By Corinne Pralavorio The vertiginous descent of equipment into the depths of the accelerator tunnels is always a captivating event. The stars of the show over the last few weeks have been the two gleaming cold boxes that have arrived in the new service tunnels of the High-Luminosity LHC (HiLumi...

Leiden Cryogenics Partners with OrangeQS for Development of Compact Dilution Refrigerator

Leiden Cryogenics has built a prototype compact dilution refrigerator, dubbed Quper, that can achieve millikelvin temperatures. Developed by the Dutch company in partnership with quantum chip testing startup Orange Quantum Systems (OrangeQS), the tabletop system has an inverted fridge design and can cool samples below 25 millikelvin before returning to...

Pelican Wire Designs for Cryogenic and Extreme Energy Systems

As renewable energy, electrification and advanced research technologies continue to expand, the demands placed on wire and cable systems are evolving just as rapidly. Higher power densities, tighter system integration and increasingly extreme operating environments are pushing manufacturers beyond traditional commodity wire solutions. Caleb Lemmons, Business Development Manager at Pelican...

Structure model of the newly discovered substance with extraordinary properties. Credit: Maximilian Stremel, Markus Suta, Ingo Widmann, Hubert Huppertz

From Cryogenic to Red-Hot: Optical temperature sensing from 77 K to 873 K

by University of Innsbruck An international collaboration involving researchers from the University of Innsbruck has developed a novel luminescent material that enables particularly robust and precise optical temperature sensing across an exceptionally broad temperature range. Optical luminescence thermometry has been gaining increasing attention, as it allows contactless temperature measurement even under...

Researchers at QuTech, working on a Fujitsu-funded project, have developed the first cryogenic control chip able to directly control both electron and nuclear spins in diamond-based qubits.

Scalable Diamond Quantum Computing with Cryogenic Chip Integration

NV centers are among the most promising qubit platforms, combining fast electron-spin control with exceptionally stable nuclear-spin memories. However, until now, these systems have depended on room-temperature electronics connected by long cables to the cryogenic environment: a setup that considerably hinders scalability and reliability. The new cryo-CMOS controller solves this...

Superconductors are essential to the wholesale overhaul of systems needed to implement the energy transformation. Image: Reuters/Ina Fassbender

What Happens When Industry Demands the Impossible? Superconductors Step In

Energy transformation is not simply a fuel switch – it’s a redesign of the systems that underpin economic growth and national energy security. Electricity demand is rising sharply, driven by the electrification of end uses and the rising demand from data centres and AI. At the same time, power systems...

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Dewar

A dewar is a type of cryostat named after Sir James Dewar, the researcher who first developed the concept of a vacuum insulated container with silvered walls to reflect thermal radiation. Dewar was the first to liquefy hydrogen, and he created the device to store his discovery. The thermos bottle...

Stirling and Gifford-McMahon Cryocoolers

Stirling and Gifford-McMahon (GM) cryocoolers are two of the most commonly used cryocoolers in cryogenics. Both devices have a significant industrial base and operate at a wide range of temperatures and capacities. The thermodynamic cycles for both of these cryocoolers are quite similar. The Stirling cycle consists of a compressor,...

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)

A significant commercial application of cryogenics is the liquefaction, transport and storage of natural gas. Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is generally 95 percent methane with a few percent ethane and much lower concentrations of propane and butane. LNG liquefies at 111.6 K. Unlike many applications of cryogenics, the motivation for...

Latest in Cryo Central

Cryogenic Electronics

Randall Kirschman, consulting physicist, Mountain View, California ExtElect@gmail.com Cryogenic electronics—the operation of electronic devices, circuits, and systems at cryogenic temperatures—has been a valuable technology for decades. Cryogenic electronics (also referred to as low-temperature electronics, or cold electronics) can be based on semiconductive devices, on superconductive devices, or on a combination...

Particle Physics: High Energy Physics

Cryogenics and High-Energy Physics 1. From symmetry magazine: http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000627: Cryogenics is the study of how materials behave at temperatures near absolute zero. In high-energy particle accelerators, such frigid temperatures reduce the electrical resistance of wires in superconducting magnets, increasing the magnet strength and allowing faster particle acceleration. The same holds...

HTS Degaussing Systems

From the Spring 2009 issue of Cold Facts (Volume 25, Number 2): Thanks to a joint project by the US Navy and a number of industry partners, high temperature superconducting (HTS) technology is now at the heart of an advanced degaussing system aboard the USS Higgins at the naval station...

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

From http://www.superconductors.org: An area where superconductors can perform a life-saving function is in the field of biomagnetism. Doctors need a non-invasive means of determining what’s going on inside the human body. By impinging a strong superconductor-derived magnetic field into the body, hydrogen atoms that exist in the body’s water and...

Latest in Ask the Experts

Seeking recommendations for commercial sensors

I would like to measure vibrations in small LHe cryostats. Could anybody recommend commercial sensors which would be suitable for the purpose? I am interested in the frequency range between 1Hz and a couple of KHz, with particular attention to the low frequency side.

Estimating cost of carbon steel, pure helium storage tanks

In order to perform an indicative cost assessment of our helium cryogenic plant (still in the design phase), I need an estimation of the cost of carbon steel room temperature pure helium storage tanks. The storage pressure is 20 bar. Can anyone give me suggestions about how to estimate the...

Supplier of pressure sensor that works down to 4.2 K

In an actual experiment we would like to measure the static pressure in a cryostat in the range between one and four bar. Therefore we are looking for some (more or less) cheap pressure sensors that work in liquid helium in the pressure range up to five bar. Unfortunately all...

Looking for reference/textbook suggestions

Can you suggest some reference textbooks for practical thermodynamics applications in cryogenic fields? I need textbooks with cryogenics calculations and examples, dimensioning procedures, second principle applications in cryogenics, heat load calculations, cryogenic pump application, etc. Do such books exist? Does any similar source of information exist?

CATEGORIES