Electrochemistry offers ‘modest’ boost to deuterium fusion reaction

New experiments suggest that electrochemistry could influence nuclear fusion between deuterium atoms in a metal lattice. While the findings won’t immediately pave the way for large-scale fusion reactors, they provide valuable insights for researchers striving to better understand the underlying processes.

‘Nuclear fusion combines light atoms, like deuterium, into helium, releasing [substantial amounts of] energy,’ says Curtis Berlinguette at the University of British Columbia in Canada. ‘It’s the same process that powers the sun.’

The fusion of two atoms into a new one occurs when nuclei get close enough for the strong nuclear force to overcome their electrostatic repulsion. For deuterium atoms, this usually requires extremely high temperatures and pressures, which is why most conventional fusion experiments rely on massive reactors, like tokamaks, to confine super-hot plasmas, or lasers.

Berlinguette and his colleagues hoped that low-energy electrochemistry, operating at the modest eV scale, might nudge along fusion reactions that normally need energies millions of times higher. They used a palladium metal lattice to pack deuterium atoms close together, increasing the probability that two nuclei might fuse. ‘We’ve shown that simple electrochemistry – using just one volt of electricity – can measurably increase nuclear fusion rates,’ Berlinguette says.

For their experiments, the researchers created a custom benchtop particle accelerator, dubbed the Thunderbird Reactor. The device integrates three components: a plasma thruster, a vacuum chamber, and an electrochemical cell.

During the experiment, deuterium atoms are packed into a solid palladium lattice, which serves multiple roles in the setup: it acts as a cathode and membrane for the electrochemical cell, a target for D⁺ ions sourced from the plasma thruster, and a physical separator between the vacuum and the electrochemical cell.

‘Our twist on lattice confinement fusion is that we use electrochemistry to enhance [the effect],’ says Berlinguette. The team reports that by increasing the likelihood of fusion, deuterium–deuterium fusion rates were boosted by 15%.

‘It’s a small but important step toward understanding how to control fusion,’ states Berlinguette. He describes the results as evidence that electrochemistry at room temperature can influence fusion rates, though the effect was modest.

No shortcut to the sun’s core

Karl Lackner of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany, who was not involved in the study, stresses that the results should not be mistaken for a breakthrough in ‘cold fusion,’ since the underlying reactions are still driven by ordinary particle collisions and increased fuel density rather than a new physical mechanism.

‘I worry about how this may be perceived by a broader audience,’ says Lackner. ‘The publication could be taken as evidence of a novel synergy between electrochemistry and fusion, hinting at a path to ‘cold’, or at least cooler, fusion. The research itself is careful, but it reinforces points that have never really been in doubt.’

Lackner explains that it is well established that hydrogen isotopes such as deuterium can be packed into metal lattices at densities far higher than in gases at room temperature. When high-energy deuterium ions strike a palladium lattice loaded with deuterium, they penetrate to nanometer depths, encountering other deuterium atoms along the way, colliding with the trapped atoms and increasing the probability of fusion.

Omar Hurricane, an expert on nuclear fusion from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US who was also not involved in the work, also says that it is ‘unsurprising’ that increasing the deuterium density would result in a small increase in the rate of fusion.

Hurricane also notes that even standard fusion setups can give variable results. ‘For perspective, fusion reaction-rate formulas in the literature can differ by [up to] 10% – depending upon the temperature – when compared against each other,’ says. A 15% increase in fusion rate is interesting, but not necessarily outside the uncertainty range, he adds.

The researchers themselves acknowledge the modesty of their results, emphasising that room-temperature electrochemistry is not a shortcut to the sun’s core. Instead, their work demonstrates that careful control of deuterium can produce measurable changes in fusion rates, offering valuable insight into the subtle interplay between materials science and nuclear physics.

‘Every credible advance brings us closer,’ says Berlinguette. ‘When you go exploring you are bound to learn something along the way.’