Historical research guide · 0497 · 2007
Condensed matter nuclear science (cold fusion): an update
Jean-Paul Biberian
In one minute
Jean-Paul Biberian, a surface physicist at Marseille, wrote this as a tour of the experiments a newcomer should know, seventeen years after the Fleischmann and Pons announcement. He starts with the original Dewar cell and explains exactly how its calorimetry works, then moves through the designs that answered the early objections: Arata and Zhang’s hollow palladium cathode packed with nanometre powder, which returned up to 24 watts in heavy water and nothing at all in ordinary water; palladium and deuterium co-deposited onto a copper cathode; a 30 milliwatt laser shone on an active cathode, which amplified the heat more than tenfold. He then walks through the nuclear evidence — helium-4 rising in step with the heat, low-level tritium from gas discharge, neutrons counted in a tunnel 100 metres underground, X-rays through a plastic window, and elements appearing on a palladium foil that were not there before. His closing point is that the effect is established and the theory is not.
Connection
Chapter 12 argues that nuclear reactions can be driven in a loaded lattice, and this paper is the compact version of the case: not one experiment but a dozen, across electrolysis, gas loading and gas discharge, each with a named group and a named measurement. It is also chapter 1’s evidence ladder in miniature — heat, then ash, then radiation, then transmutation, each rung measured by a different technique.
From the source
The demonstration of cold fusion was made long ago by showing excess heat production in electrolytic cells and other devices, and nuclear ashes have been observed, mainly the formation of helium-4 along with the production of excess heat. What makes the field difficult to accept is the lack of the usual particle emission observed in nuclear science or high-energy physics — which is also why the field renamed itself condensed matter nuclear science, a name that better fits the reality of the observations.Abstract; Section 1, A brief history of cold fusion
Arata and Zhang replaced the solid palladium cathode with a hollow one filled with nanometre-sized palladium powder and ran it in a mass flow calorimeter with an internal recombiner, so no correction to the input power was needed. The heavy water cell produced large amounts of heat, up to 24 watts, while the light water cell produced none at all; the run ends when the cathode bursts under the deuterium pressure that builds inside it. The experiment was duplicated by McKubre and colleagues at SRI.Section 3.1, The double cathode, Figure 2
Helium-4 rises in step with the heat. Miles and colleagues and Bush and colleagues were the first to give accurate measurements of helium-4 and a good correlation between excess heat and the amount of helium detected, and Gozzi and colleagues showed the same correlation a few years later. In the Arata and Zhang double cathode, helium-4 appears during electrolysis in heavy water and no helium is observed in the light water experiment.Section 4, Helium detection, Figure 6
Three further routes to excess heat are reported. Miles and colleagues co-deposited palladium and deuterium onto a copper cathode from palladium chloride in the electrolyte and measured up to 300 milliwatts of excess heat, and Biberian’s own mass flow version of the same experiment gave 500 milliwatts. Depositing gold onto a palladium cathode through the dissolution of a gold anode gave 170 milliwatts. And Letts and Cravens showed that shining a 30 milliwatt argon-neon laser beam on an active cathode increases the excess heat by more than a factor of ten.Sections 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4, Figures 3, 4 and 5
The low-level radiations are there when you look for them properly. Claytor and colleagues demonstrated low-level tritium production in gas discharge experiments with palladium electrodes in deuterium gas. Jones and colleagues electrolysed titanium electrodes in heavy water inside a high-sensitivity neutron counter placed in a tunnel 100 metres below the surface, where the background falls to two counts per day, and recorded counts well above that background. Violante and colleagues measured X-rays with a germanium detector at the bottom of an electrolytic cell fitted with a plastic window so the glass and electrolyte could not absorb them.Section 5, Tritium measurement, Figure 7; Section 6, Neutron detection, Figure 8; Section 7, X-rays, Figure 9
New elements appear. In the Iwamura permeation experiment, deuterium gas leaks outward through a treated palladium foil while X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy watches the surface in situ: with strontium on the top layer the strontium signal falls and molybdenum appears, and with caesium on top the caesium signal falls and praseodymium appears. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy shows the new molybdenum has an isotopic distribution very different from natural molybdenum, and a blank run without strontium shows nothing. The authors propose caesium-133 plus four deuterons giving praseodymium-141, and strontium-88 plus four deuterons giving molybdenum-96. Biberian’s own verdict is that the experimental case is made and the theory is not: at this point there is no satisfactory theory explaining the unique characteristics of condensed matter nuclear science, though many models have been proposed, several of them using textbook physics.Section 8.1, Deuterium permeation, Figures 10 to 13; Section 8.2, Figure 14; Abstract and Section 9, Conclusion
The way in
https://doi.org/10.1504/ijnest.2007.012439How to cite it
Jean-Paul Biberian (2007) Condensed matter nuclear science (cold fusion): an update doi:10.1504/ijnest.2007.012439