From left to right: top: E.I. Azarkevich, A.M. Murzakaev, I.V. Beketov, O.M. Samatov, A.I. Medvedev,
A.D. Maksimov, A.V. Bagazeev,
bottom: O.R. Timoshenkova, T.M. Demina, E.G. Kalinina, I.A. Vlasova,
K.I. Demidova, I.V. Krutikova, (2017, November)

In the late 60s, a group of employees headed by Yu.A. Kotov took up the study of the electric explosion of wires (EEW). The analysis of the experimental data obtained and literature allowed us to obtain similarity criteria for describing the EEW, and on their basis to create a methodology for the engineering calculation of the current interrupter on the EEW. According to this technique, high-current direct-action electron accelerators with an intermediate inductive energy storage and a current interrupter on EEW were designed and created. The proposed scheme made it possible to create a series of electron beam accelerators (electron energy up to 2.5 MeV, electron beam current up to 80 kA, half-height pulse duration of about 50 ns) and bremsstrahlung generators “VIRA-1.5” (effective energy 0.8 MeV, the dose rate of bremsstrahlung radiation up to 150 Gr/s, the duration of a gamma pulse about 35 ns), the dimensions of which were several times smaller than their counterparts.

In the early 1990s, a current-breaking semiconductor diode was discovered in the laboratory, and accelerators with a thyristor-magnetic or thyratron-magnetic energy compression circuit and a semiconductor current chopper with an electron energy of up to 0.5 MeV, pulse repetition frequency up to 240 Hz, duration pulse at half-height of about 50 ns, average power up to 1.5 kW, beam size up to 10 × 10 sq.cm. for technological applications were created.

Since 1976, the possibilities of EEW for the production of nanopowders of various substances have been investigated. The work performed allowed to establish a relationship between the size of the particles produced, the conditions for energy input and the characteristics of the metal. Installations for the production of powders of metals, alloys and their oxides have been developed.

Since 1997, the laboratory has been researching the production of nanopowders using evaporation of a target by radiation from a pulsed CO₂ laser (together with a laboratory of quantum electronics), and since 2008 using a fiber ytterbium laser. The created installations make it possible to obtain nanopowders of a wide class of substances with a narrow particle size distribution with a characteristic size of about 15 nm.

In 2006, a setup was created in the laboratory for producing nanopowders and using the evaporation of targets by a pulsed electron beam, which makes it possible to obtain powders with a particle size of about 5 nm. The existing range of installations and technologies allows us to work successfully in the field of creating structural and functional materials for hydrogen energy devices, light sources and medicine.