Dense Plasma Focus

A dense plasma focus, or DPF, is a plasma generating device originally developed as a fusion power concept beginning in the early 1960s, though it is used today mainly as a scientific and teaching instrument rather than a route to net energy. A typical DPF passes a large electric current between two concentric cylindrical electrodes, ionizing the surrounding gas into plasma and generating a magnetic field that drives the plasma down the tube; the plasma sheet then bows outward and the continuing current compresses it into an extremely dense, fast moving column, a process that happens many times faster than the speed of sound in the surrounding gas. Soviet physicist N.V. Filippov discovered the effect in 1954 while working on early pinch machines, and research continued in the USSR through the following decades, while American physicist J.W. Mather independently developed a separate version of the device in the early 1960s. When operated with deuterium fuel, a dense plasma focus produces intense bursts of X-rays, charged particles and neutrons, which has led to applications in microelectronics lithography, medical diagnosis and therapy, security screening and materials research.