University of Washington
🇺🇸 US · Active
Also known as UW, HIT-SI, ZaP
The University of Washington has two lines of fusion research that led to spin-off companies. Its HIT-SI experiment, a spheromak (a compact ring of plasma held largely by its own currents), ran from about 2004 to 2012, then continued as the upgraded HIT-SI3 and HIT-SIU. From it, with Department of Energy funding, the university developed the dynomak reactor concept. Students from the group founded CTFusion in 2015 to commercialise the dynomak; CTFusion closed in 2023. The university's research on the sheared-flow stabilised Z-pinch, which uses fast-flowing plasma layers to keep a pinched plasma column stable, led to the spin-off Zap Energy in 2017.
- Sector
- Fusion
- Technology
- Z-pinch
- Role
- University, Research institute
Terms
- Z-pinch
- A current driven straight through a plasma column, whose own magnetic field squeezes it inward. Long set aside as unstable; sheared-flow stabilisation, studied at the University of Washington and pursued commercially by Zap Energy, renewed work on it.