First in-house batch of GaInSn: we “cooked” the alloy in house as in “Breaking Bad”. This is the same material found in your mercury-free thermometer, in ml quantities, but we cooked tens of liters, in a brewery pot.

Our first table-top liquid metal loop, built with parts from “Leroy Merlin” (a European “Home Depot”).

Our first liquid metal pump built in-house, by arraying permanent magnets on a rotor, with a whooping 110 kW maximum power.

Largest GaInSn loop in the world: 7m long, 1 m/s flow (“Skyfall 0”).

First levitation of a liquid metal flow (1-2 cm thick) in a meter-sized cylinder by electromagnetic forces (“Skyfall 1a”).

Completed our in-house 3D free-surface Liquid Metal (LM) Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) code and successfully benchmarked it against experimental results. Now regularly used to predict and interpret LMMHD experiments.

First levitation and control of a very thick liquid metal flow in a cylinder. The cylinder diameter (1 m) approaches reactor scales, and the flow thickness (10 cm of GaInSn, equivalent in mass to 120 cm of Li-LiH) exceed by 3.5x our reactor needs. Compared to Skyfall 1a, we also greatly reduced the fall of droplets that could radiatively collapse the plasma (“Skyfall 1b”).

Identified two “finalist” solid materials that will withstand dynamic corrosion by hot liquid metals in our stellarator reactor (only few microns per day).

Completed our first large Annular Linear Induction Pump (ALIP) for hot Sn, Li and other metals – the first company and one of only 2-3 organizations worldwide to ever build and ALIP of that scale and the first one, ever, capable of operating at up to 850 C.

First successful test of a proprietary “freeze valve” to stop the liquid metal flow by rapid solidification.