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

Canadian-built Laser Chills Antimatter to Near Absolute Zero for First Time

On March 30, the CERN-based ALPHA (Anti-hydrogen Laser Physics Apparatus) collaboration, including team members from TRIUMF, announced the world’s first laser-based manipulation of antimatter, leveraging a made-in-Canada laser system to cool a sample of antimatter down to near absolute zero significantly altering the  landscape of antimatter research and advance the next...

Montana Instruments Introduces CryoCore™ for High-Throughput Electrical and Optical Materials Characterization

This April, Montana Instruments Corporation, a manufacturer of high precision, fully automated closed-cycle optical cryostats, introduced CryoCore™, a new streamlined cryogenic platform built for high-throughput electrical and optical materials characterization. Using advancements in thermal and low vibration design, the cryostat is a low vibration, cryogen-free system that allows users to...

New Combination of Materials Provides Progress Toward Quantum Computing

In research published June 14 in Nature Communications, engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute demonstrated how, when semiconductor materials known as the transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) materials they make are stacked in a particular geometry, the interaction that occurs between particles gives researchers more control over the devices’ properties. Specifically, the...

Baker Hughes, Borg CO2 to Develop Carbon Capture, Storage Hub for Industrial Cluster in Norway

Baker Hughes, an American-based energy technology company, and Borg CO2 AS, a Norwegian carbon capture and storage developer for industrial clusters, announced a collaboration on a carbon capture and storage project to serve as a hub for the decarbonization of industrial sites in the Viken region of Norway. The project...

Refrigeration Breakthrough Takes Chinese Quantum Science Near Absolute Zero

China has achieved a breakthrough in self-developed refrigeration equipment – a high-end scientific device that can provide an environment of near absolute zero without using liquid helium. The device lasts longer and is more convenient to use and maintain, compared with traditional cooling machines that use cryogens. The device was...

NASA, Northrop Grumman Finalize Moon Outpost Living Quarters Contract

NASA and Northrop Grumman of Dulles, Virginia, have finalized a contract to develop the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) for Gateway, which will be a critical way station and outpost in orbit around the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program.

Latest in Defining Cryogenics

Joule-Thomson Effect

The Joule-Thomson (JT) effect is a thermodynamic process that occurs when a fluid expands from high pressure to low pressure at constant enthalpy (an isenthalpic process). Such a process can be approximated in the real world by expanding a fluid from high pressure to low pressure across a valve. Under...

Current Leads

One of the challenges of using superconducting magnets is the connection of the magnet to a room temperature power supply. This is accomplished via current leads. The trick is that current leads should ideally have a low heat leak, since they connect room temperature to cryogenic temperature, while at the...

Multilayer Insulation

Multilayer insulation (also referred to as superinsulation) is a key component in the reduction of heat leak to cryogenic systems due to thermal radiation. MLI consists of a series of uncooled reflective surfaces placed in the vacuum space between two surfaces, one warmer than the other. Generally speaking, for ideal...

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

An Issue of Pressure and Flow Rate in a Supply Tank

Please help solve this problem: A supply tank requires a vaporizer to generate sufficient pressure to pump stored fluid up into a vehicle or tank. The available head is limited as the tank level falls and it is important to minimize the system pressure drop to maintain the desired flow...

Using MLI on VJ Line Joints or Cryo Storage Tanks

When installing Multi Layer Insulation (MLI) blankets on VJ line joints or cryo storage tanks should they be wrapped and tied down tight or loose? These are usually pre-cut to size. Also should they have an access hole at the point of where the molecular sieve is installed to help...

Separated layers of ice over a pipe

I want to know that why there are different layers of ice over a pipe carrying a cryogenic fluid, each layer separated with clear marks / lines? What do these layers signify?

Using nitrogen as a cryogen

Is it possible to achieve -200˚C using nitrogen as a cryogen?

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