UC Berkeley

Nuclear fusion research for energy applications aims to create conditions that release more energy than required to initiate the fusion process1. To generate meaningful amounts of energy, fuels such as deuterium need to be spatially confined to increase the collision probability of particles2-4. We therefore set out to investigate whether electrochemically loading a metal lattice with deuterium fuel could increase the probability of nuclear fusion events. Here we report a benchtop fusion reactor that enabled us to bombard a palladium metal target with deuterium ions. These deuterium ions undergo deuterium-deuterium fusion reactions within the palladium metal. We showed that the in situ electrochemical loading of deuterium into the palladium target resulted in a 15(2)% increase in deuterium-deuterium fusion rates. This experiment shows how the electrochemical loading of a metal target at the electronvolt energy scale can affect nuclear reactions at the megaelectronvolt energy scale.