April 27, 2016 – A contract from NASA was awarded to Principals at Skyhaven Systems, LLC to develop a new electrolytic method for coating uranium oxide spheres with tungsten. Tungsten clad uranium dioxide spheres are deemed an enabling technology for nuclear thermal propulsion.  Current research has mainly focused upon chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technologies to apply the tungsten cladding.  Although good progress has been made with this technique, the process still requires improvements to lower the impurity content, increase throughput, and lower the operating costs.  Skyhaven principals are developing an electrolytic process for coating high purity tungsten metal onto uranium dioxide spheres economically. The process is performed at ambient pressure and is expected to provide a uniform, dense, and adherent coating.

This effort will lead to demonstrating the electrolytic deposition of tungsten onto surrogate spheres where the coating will be evaluated for thickness, uniformity, and adhesion.  A manufacturing cost model will be established for the process and a pathway to large scale economic production will be outlined. Future development work is envisioned to improve and characterize the coating’s properties in terms of process capability, evaluate coated spheres in a suitable hydrogen environment, perform thermal cycling tests, scale the fabrication process, and provide coated materials to NASA for evaluation.