Robyn Legard
University of Manchester
Co-hort year: 2025
I completed my integrated masters degree in Physics at the University of Nottingham in 2023 with a focus on astrophysics and cosmology. I went on to work as a software specialist in credit risk assessment at Moodys. mostly using Python and SQL. Through working in finance for two years I learned that by far the most important thing in your work is passion, and decided to return to physics. Now, I have joined the Fusion CDT at the University of Manchester as a way to attempt to contribute to curbing the energy crisis. While at Manchester, I will be working on developing 2D solid state hydrogen separation membranes with Dr Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo and Dr Ed Pickering.
My work addresses the fact that fusion fuel cycles are not entirely efficient and waste substantial amounts of tritium and deuterium, which can be reused as in further reactions or to make heavy water, which is necessary to operate fission reactors. Current methods of producing heavy water are extremely energy intensive, so alleviating that cost is good for the environment and selling that bi-product helps make fusion energy more feasible for commercial use and more economically attractive to industry. The more we are able to recycle used materials into more fuel or heavy water, the more likely fusion can be adopted for wide-scale use, and the faster this may be able to happen. One atom thick membranes are impermeable to atoms, but permeable to hydrogen ions, which presents a potential way to filter hydrogen ions through use of monolayers of graphene and as such could separate the tritium to be reused and deuterium to be sold. This will involve practical experimentation and clean room techniques, and will hopefully result in a real prototype that can be shared with the Kyoto Fusioneering team, who are our industrial sponsor.
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