REVIEW article
Front. Nucl. Eng.
Sec. Nuclear Reactor Design
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnuen.2025.1620419
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring the Future of Nuclear Fusion: Developments in Inertial Electrostatic Confinement and Emerging TechnologyView all articles
An Overview of Research Groups and Their Activities in the Field of Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion
Provisionally accepted
- 1Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany
- 2University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
- 3AGH University of Krakow, Krakow, Poland
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Inertial electrostatic confinement fusion has developed into a widespread academic field since its inception in the 1950s and 1960s. This paper provides an overview of the different research groups (universities and research institutes) and companies involved in the field of IECF and their scientific publications. A list of over 970 publications from 56 universities, 20 research institutes, and 25 companies was collected and analyzed. Also, an overview of the most common type of IECF devices, often referred to as "gridded" IECF device or "fusor" was created, including more than 30 devices. This paper serves as both a reference guide to the literature and the IECF devices.
Keywords: Inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC), Inertial electrostatic confinement fusion (IECF), neutron source, bibliometric analysis, Fusion concept
Received: 29 Apr 2025; Accepted: 18 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wulfkühler, Bakr Arby and Tajmar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jan-Philipp Wulfkühler, Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.