Fabrication of hollow glass microspheres for inertial confinement fusion targets by depolymerizable mandrel method

A preparation method of hollow glass microsphere (HGM) is investigated, which adopts glow discharge polymerization technology and uses tetramethyl silane (TMS) as the dopant gas, in order to control the diameter and thickness of hollow glass microspheres for inertial confinement fusion targets. The results show that 5% silicon in Si-GDP shells is a compromised concentration for fabricating HGM whose diameter is 400-600 μm and thickness is 5-15 μm. We can successfully control the shrinkage of the diameter and wall thickness at about 38%. The carbon concentration of the samples decreases significantly and it mainly exists in the form of C-Si bonding, while the silicon concentration increases significantly and it mainly exists in the form of Si-O bonding after the sintering step. The residual pressure reaches 72.95% in the shells which filled 1.23 MPa deuterium after 96 h. (authors)