Effects of gel particle properties on fabrication process of hollow glass microspheres in drop-tower furnace by dried gel method

To fabricate high quality hollow glass microsphere (HGM) for inertial confinement fusion targets by dried gel method, effects of gel particle diameter, specific heat, blowing agent concentration and thermal radiation absorption coefficient on the transformation process from gel particle to HGMs and the resulting quality of HGMs were investigated by numerical simulation and experiments. The results show that with the increase of diameter and/or specific heat of dried-gel particles, heating-up rate of gel particle in heating and encapsulating stages is significantly reduced, and the residence time in various stages of the transformation process is sharply shortened, especially for the residence time in refining stage. The velocity of particle/microsphere increases remarkably with decreasing