Zachary Hartwig

Zachary (Zach) Hartwig is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) with a co-appointment at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). He has worked primarily in the areas of large-scale applied superconductivity, magnet fusion device design, and plasma-material interactions with additional activities in nuclear security, radiation detector development, Monte Carlo particle transport simulation, and accelerator science and engineering. His active research focuses primarily on the development of high-field superconducting magnet technologies for fusion energy and accelerated irradiation methods for fusion materials using ion beams. He is a co-founder of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a private company commercializing fusion energy. He received his PhD from MIT NSE in 2013 for developing a new generation of particle accelerator-based diagnostics to study plasma-material interactions in fusion devices and received his B.A. in Physics from Boston University in 2005.

• Fusion Power Associates Award for Excellence in Fusion Engineering (2022)
• MIT Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Excellence in Teaching (2019)

Intermediate energy proton irradiation of materials

Proton beams between 10 and 30 MeV offer a rapid, high fidelity approach to studying the evolution of engineering material properties in response to fusion- and fission-relevant radiation environments. The proton energy provides the tunable, uniform damage in bulk samples suitable for engineering property characterization. Other advantages include high damage rates and intrinsic hydrogen and helium transmutation. A first-of-kind proton irradiation facility – The Schmidt Laboratory for Materials in Nuclear Technologies – is now under construction at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center. This facility will be used to characterize a wide range of existing materials under near-prototypic fusion environments as well as to provide testing data towards the development of novel material solutions for nuclear power, fusion energy, and high energy particle physics.

High-field superconducting magnet technology

Recent advances in the performance and industrial production of high-temperature superconductors are enabling a new generation of large-scale, high magnetic field superconducting magnets for applications such as fusion energy, particle accelerators, and other industrial applications. Active research in this area is focused on demonstrating 50 to 100 kA class HTS conductors, qualifying novel quench detection technologies, developing defect-tolerant HTS conductors and magnets, and quantifying superconducting performance evolution under fusion-relevant neutron irradiation.