Accelerated evaporative drying of RF foam for ICF target fabrication

An evaporative drying process is being developed to remove the residual fluid phase from resorcinol formaldehyde (RF) foam shells once they are fully polymerized. This development is part of a microfluidic “lab-on-a-chip” approach for the mass production of inertial fusion energy (IFE) targets. The most-promising prospect for accelerating air drying to less than 24 h is to use a low surface-tension fluid (water containing a surfactant, or as alcohol) at an elevated temperature (50°C) while maintaining the foam structure under a tensile load to counteract the induced capillary forces.