A new grant from the Department of Energy is enabling Dr. Stephen Remillard of the Hope College physics faculty to explore how microplasmas function — understanding that is meant to improve their value in applications ranging from the design of small radio components, to plasma display panels, to surgery.
The three-year, $142,902 award is providing support from August of this year through July of 2021 for Remillard’s project “Generating and sustaining microplasma with microwaves.”
Remillard and his team of student researchers are creating microplasmas using microwaves and a variety of types of gases. As they study the results they hope to determine how to model the properties and outcomes that they observe through experimentation.
“We are developing models of the formation of microplasma, which is gas breakdown in very small spaces,” said Remillard, who is an associate professor of physics and department chair. “We’re seeking to develop mathematical equations that contain parameters that will enable us to accurately reflect real physical properties.”
Accurate models, in turn, can help researchers anticipate what will happen if they change materials or other conditions in their experiments.
Microplasma research is a relatively young field, growing across the past quarter century or so as the potential for commercial uses has increased. Remillard and students have been working with microplasmas since shortly after he joined the Hope faculty in 2007.
His interest in them goes back some years more. Prior to pursuing a career as a college educator and researcher, he was a physicist and director of engineering in industry, where he encountered challenges with microplasmas that at the time he wasn’t able to investigate.
“I put that aside for several years until I came to Hope,” he said. “Students were looking for research projects, and I remembered that I had this unfinished problem from my industry days.”
The work is being conducted by the physics department’s Microwave Group, which Remillard leads and in addition to studying microplasma conducts research in microwave superconductivity, dispersion in microwave devices and ion beam analysis of semiconductors. The students work in Remillard’s laboratory part time during the school year and full time for eight weeks each summer. Through the years the team has included Hope students as well as students from Grand Valley State University.
Remillard graduated from Calvin College in 1988 with a major in physics, and holds a master’s degree in physics and a doctorate in experimental solid state physics from the College of William and Mary. Immediately before joining the Hope faculty, he held visiting appointments in physics at Grand Valley State University from 2005 to 2007 and Calvin College during the 2004-05 school year.