Direct Casting of Er-Alloys for High-performance Cryocooler Regenerators

"This proposal considers the potential of direct casting of micro channel cryocooler regenerators. Currently, cryocoolers use regenereators made of packed spheres, which decrease the efficiency of the regenerator and, of course, the cryocooler itself.This is an important issue when considering placing cryocoolers on satellites and the cryocooler itself utilized almost half of the power supply. The proposed system promises to offer significantly higher performance than existing technology, resulting inlower weight and volume of the regenerator. The applications of this technology could potentially be far reaching with large market potential. This technology will benefit NASA, civil aeronautics, and the commercial sector for space based and airborneuses such as missile tracking, surveillance, astronomy, mapping, weather monitoring, and earth resource monitoring. The need for high reliability cryocoolers for terrestrial applications includes cellular bay station cooling and magnetic resonanceimaging. Other potential applications include CMOS (complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor) cooling for workstations and personal computers."