The biggest leaps this year advancing experimental work in solid state fusion were in nano-layer cathode materials, exploring electron screening as a precursor to fusion, and the production of direct electricity, much the result of dedicated program funding and multi-disciplinary collaborations that are synergizing research.
Here is a video of actual platinum nano-particles as they floated in a liquid captured in 3-D by an electron microscope at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab:
The US agency ARPA-e is sponsoring eight labs to investigate the evidence of LENR using $10,000,000. [more] The LENR Program kickoff meeting in October 2023 showed a few of the proposals focused on nano-particle materials. [visit] It was during an educational LENR workshop for ARPA-e back in 2021 [visit], Deputy Principle Investigator on the Lattice Confinement Fusion Project at NASA Lawrence Forsley presented a talk on the importance of nano-materials, where he cites numerous instances of nano-particle excess heat, a few represented here in this slide:
An earlier article on Metal nano-particle heat science at ICCF25 [read] reviewed the research to be reported at the 25th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science ICCF25 last August at Szczecin, Poland, where many of the nano-particle presenters were associated with Clean Planet, Inc. in Japan. Some of those presentations are now available for viewing.
JAPAN IS THE NANO-PARTICLE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE
The success of Clean Planet has proven that the nano-space is central to accessing the Heat Channel in the solid state spectrum. Their nickel-copper multi-layer nano-composite material infused with hydrogen is generating on the order of 10-100 keV per hydrogen reaction in the lab, and based on this work, the company is prototyping a 2 kW heat generator called the Ikaros QHe. [visit]
Takehiko Itoh, T. Takahashi, Mari Saito, Y. Shibasaki, and Shoichi Murakami
Japan has a long history of nano-particle research. Yoshiaki Arata and Yue-Chang Zhang were one of the first to use palladium-black particles to make big heat in the early 1990s. Tadahiko Mizuno of Mizuno Tech [visit], Akito Takahashi of New Hydrogen Energy [visit], and Akira Kitamora of Kobe University [visit], to name just a few, have all experimented with various nano-materials and methods to make them.
Today, Clean Planet works with multiple academic institutions and companies to bring a technology out of the lab and first, into an industrial setting. Founder and CEO Hideki Yoshino was compelled to act after the Fukushima Disaster and has effectively marshaled the entire country of Japan to develop a new energy technology based on hydrogen fusion, and collaborations are at the heart of the effort.
Lead Scientist Yasuhiro Iwamura of the Research Center for Electron Photon Science at Tohoku University in Japan combined his initial research in transmutations at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries with his subsequent research in nano-particle heat at Tohoku University to develop the technology behind the Ikaros QHe. At the 25th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science ICCF25, he presented a background of that work in Elemental analysis and quadrupole mass spectrometry towards the clarification of anomalous heat generation observed in Ni-based nano-multilayer metal composite and hydrogen gas [watch on Youtube].
Tohoku University Professor Jirohta Kasagi, also with the Research Center for Electron Photon Science, presented Photon radiation calorimetry for anomalous heat generation in NiCu multilayer thin film during hydrogen gas desorption [watch on Youtube] going deep in to initiating power bursts with nano-materials, and their representation through infra-red cameras, confirming what thermocouples measure.
Clean Planet Chief Science Officer Takehito Itoh presented an update this year on Photon Radiation Analysis for Spontaneous Heat Burst during Hydrogen Desorption from Nano-sized Metal composite. While the most recent talk is not publicly available, the previous presentation will provide an overview of this work and is available here on Youtube.
Also, read Takehito Itoh’s “Optical Observation of Spontaneous Heat Burst Phenomena during Hydrogen Desorption from Nano-Sized Metal Composite” from the Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science 36, 274–84 from 2022 here, which contains a lovely photo of the core reactor six double-layer stack:
Beyond the orbit of Clean Planet, nanoparticle materials form the focus of Shinya Narita’s presentation at ICCF25 Heat Measurement in Hydrogen Desorption Experiment Using Pd Foil Coated [watch on Youtube] on behalf of his team at Iwate University including Nagayuki Yanagidate, Tomo Nemoto, and Aiko Shoji.
Iwate University is also hosting the 26th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science ICCF26 in the Spring of 2025, and we’re sure to hear big nano news by then.
Around the world, many are following the nano-heat success using powders and finding methods to manufacture a hydrogen-loaded nano-space that will provide big heat. ARAPA-e Teaming Partner Wu-Shou Zhang of the State Key Laboratory of NBC in China reported this year on Refinement process and mechanism of nano-Cu-Ni-Zr alloy by high-energy ball milling in collaboration with Hui Zhao, Yan-Xia Liang, Wu-Yun Xiao, Da-Hai Liu of the Institute of Chemistry, CAS in Beijing. This video is not available, but you can read a paper Excess heat in a Pd(Pt)-D2O+LiOD reflux open-electrolytic cell [.pdf] presented at an earlier meeting.
This slide from Condensed Matter Nuclear Reactions in Nano-Materials [.pdf] presented by Lawrence Forsley shows just a few of the successful excess power experiments that utilized nano-materials, and is not exhaustive:
This year, Jean-Paul Biberian presented Excess Heat in Nano Particles Based on Hydrotalcites [watch on Youtube], a collaboration with Jacques Ruer, Christophe Le Roux, Mathieu Valat, Sébastien Bucher, Robert Michel, and Arnaud Kodeck as part of the European Union’s Horizon2020 program, a multi-disciplinary, multi-national, dynamic partnership sharing laboratory resources and results.
PROBING ELECTRON SCREENING BY PARTICLE BEAM
The European Union’s Horizon2020 program is supporting 16 different labs, under the Clean Energy from Hydrogen-Metal Systems CleanHME project, [visit] most involving nano-particle materials and many focused on the topic of electron screening. The Horizon2020 mission was stated by Konrad Czerski of the Institute of Physics at University of Szczecin, at a 2021 meeting in Xiamen [watch]:
“A consortium of 16 scientific institutions and trade companies from Europe, Canada and the US started in 2020 a research project devoted to the study of various powders and metallic bulk materials in a hydrogen atmosphere to find the best solution for a future nuclear fusion energy source at extremely low energies. The project will be supported by the European Union over the next four years. The main research idea is to combine accelerator experiments performed at the lowest possible energies that enable the precise determination of electron screening energies and gas-loading experiments measuring excess heat and the expected low-level nuclear radiation. This approach also aims to understand the mechanisms by which nuclear processes are enhanced at room temperature and at the slightly increased temperatures observed in previous experiments. We also hope that the optimization of the chemical composition of active materials, gas pressure and ambient temperature will allow the construction of a new type of small gas reactors producing cheap, clean and safe energy for various purposes.” — From A European Union Project: Clean Energy from Hydrogen Metal Systems [.pdf]
Read how the collaborative projects are structured here: [.pdf]
Konrad Czerski and his team at the University of Szczecin hosted the 25th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science ICCF25 [Program and Abstracts .pdf] where the eLBRUS particle beam accelerator resides, capable of low-energy beam experiments. 12% of talks at the ICCF25 involved particle beam work by scientists, many sharing research from CleanHME participating institutions like Jožef Stefan Institute, University of Szczecin, Institute for Solid-State Nuclear Physics, BroadBit Energy Technologies, Futureon, Akademia Morska w Szczecinie, Uppsala Universitet, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Politecnico di Torino, Vegatec, Universita degli Studi di Siena, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, LIFCO, SART von Rohr, Lakoco, and Lakehead University.
An earlier article reviewed electron screening talks at ICCF25. [read] Electron screening provides enough negative-charge from surrounding electrons to hide the positively-charged nuclei from each other, allowing nuclei to approach a bit closer than usual, within distance to allow fusion by tunneling, or some other as-yet-unknown mechanism. Electron screening in the solid state fusion community has been poorly represented due to the difficulty in performing diagnostic experiments at low-energies. Sharing resources and funding research is paying off.
The most recent presentations on electron screening are unavailable to the public at this time, but one presentation you can check out is Lawrence Forsley’s Plasma-induced Electron Screening at the Bragg Peak. [watch on Youtube] See also his previous talk from ICCF24 Electron Screened and Enhanced Nuclear Reactions. [watch on Youtube]
DIRECT ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION
Frank Gordon and Harper Whitehouse’s Lattice Energy Converter LEC makes a whole lot of electrons. It was introduced at ICCF23 [watch on Youtube], publicly demonstrated at ICCF24 [watch on Youtbe], and became an open science project at ICCF25. [watch on Youtube].
The electrons produced from the LEC may be providing the screening needed for the fusion process, and may also play a role in the fusion mechanism.
SolidStateFusion.org interviewed both Frank Gordon [visit] and Harper Whitehouse [visit] this year, just as the International Society of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science ISCMNS [visit] has formed a group to investigate scaling the LEC power up to make a 1 Watt LED light. Alan Smith stated the challenge in December’s LENR-Forum News:
“Based on the literature, it takes approximately 1 watt of power for LEDs to produce between 100 to 200 lumens of light. Experimental results presented at ICCF 25 showed an LEC that was producing 3.0 x 10-5 watts of power per square centimeter of electrode surface area. Increasing the output power by 5 orders of magnitude would produce 3 watts of power. Opportunities to increase the output power include increasing the electrode size from 1 square centimeter to 1000 square cms, (1 square foot) to increase the output by 3 orders of magnitude. Also, improved, or more active, materials including nanoparticle electrodes, and LEC cell designs that improve ion harvesting efficiency, and optimize gas pressures and mixtures. In combination, we believe that 5 or more orders of magnitude improvement can be achieved to meet the goal.” —Alan Smith, LENR-Forum News December 2023. [visit]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE GRABS A SAMPLE
To help organize all the new info, Jed Rothwell of LENR Library [visit] added a ChatGPT query box [visit] to enhance search. Also this year, the LENRdashboard [visit] came online for search and analysis using LENR Library archive content.
LENR Library got a bump up with the content of Edmund Storms’ collection, perhaps the largest collection of cold fusion papers anywhere on the planet. As we approach the thirty-five year mark since the discovery of fusion-sized power from the hydrogen in water was announced, the inability of conventional science to digest that disruption is on full display with the set of early editorials. The virulent bullying dished out by the “reasoned class” towards something they couldn’t understand will provide a dessert of schadenfreude in the not-to-distant future. Find an example of the poor attitudes here, and see all most recent uploads here.
As we learn how to use AI tools effectively and as the synergy of collaborations across borders produce new and creative solutions, we’ll see an acceleration of data. Strong analysis will be needed to recognize what is useful, and ensure that the best solutions are enabled. As Marshall McLuhan observed, “The ignorance of how to use new knowledge stockpiles exponentially.” [more]
