Production of glass balloons for laser targets

An apparatus for producing small quantities of glass balloons for use as laser fusion targets is described. To produce precise quantities of the ingredients of one glass balloon, a jet of an aqueous solution of the glass constituents and a blowing agent is metered into uniformly sized drops by Rayleigh breakup. A small fraction of these uniform drops is then passed through an oven where the water is evaporated, the remaining solid material is fused into glass, and the blowing agent decomposes to blow the drop into a balloon. An analysis is made of the heat flow process and photographs of the resulting glass balloons are presented