Performance of a foam copper-based chromium potassium alum salt pill in an adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator

Hydrated paramagnetic salt pills are important components in an adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator (ADR) for temperatures below 500 mK. To improve the heat transfer performance between salt crystals and external thermal links, thermal buses are commonly employed inside the salt pill. Common forms of thermal buses are either thin copper pillars made from electric discharge machining (EDM) or wire bundles, both of which generally involve considerable machining or labor. This paper introduces a novel design and fabrication of a simple foam copper -based paramagnetic salt pill. The foam copper has 30 pores per inch (PPI), a porosity of 98 %, 0.005 m2/g specific surface area, and an estimated pore diameter of 0.82 mm. The complete design, assembling process, and growth of the foam copper -based chromium potassium alum (CPA) salt pill (40 mm in length and 23 mm in diameter) are introduced. A single -stage ADR is built based on this salt pill to test its performance, while another salt pill with the wire thermal bus has also been tested for comparison. A typical cool -down from 4.3 K @ 4 T with a demagnetization rate of 0.0025 T/s led to a no-load temperature of 176.5 mK, slightly better than that using a wire thermal bus. In terms of cooling power per gram of salt, the cooling capacities at 600 mK of both salt pills have also been measured and both have shown similar performance. This preliminary study has shown the potential of the foam copper -based salt pill though more research is required to optimize its performance.