Speaker
Ludger WEBER
(EPFL)
Description
High end applications as the beam collimators for the LHC or first wall materials in fusion reactors require not only
innovative engineering of the assembly and the structural parts but require also unique property combinations
of the materials they are made of, e.g. good electrical conductivity, high thermal conductivity, low absorption of
elemental particles, low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), high stiffness, high strength etc.. Some of these
requirements may even be mutually exclusive in monolithic materials.
A common strategy to cope with such unprecedented property combinations is to use a composite approach,
which is essentially a structural solution on the micron scale. In this talk materials combining diamond
particles and metallic matrices are presented that combine low CTE, high thermal and electrical conductivity,
and high stiffness. A few fundamental issues concerning the potential and the limitations of these materials as
well as possibilities to manufacture such materials and current challenges in the development will be discussed.
Author
Ludger WEBER
(EPFL)
