In the civil and industrial domain, our cryocoolers are used for a variety of applications.
Cooled Infrared IDCA’s are used for a number of non-defence applications, such as:
- Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy
- Hyperspectral imaging for gas detection
- Security & Surveillance imaging
In addition, our cryocoolers are used to cool superconducting devices. By using superconducting circuits, devices with attractive properties can be realized, such as RF filters with a sharply-defined pass or stop band, or highly sensitive magnetic field detectors.
Thales rotary monobloc Stirling coolers are used for civil applications such as surveillance or gas detection. For instance, our RM3 cooler is integrated within a 24/7 gas detection system supplied by one of our US customers, running for several years now.
A large application field for (particularly) the linear Stirling and Pulse-tube coolers is gamma ray spectroscopy. In order to reach the energy resolution required to accurately determine the gamma ray spectrum emitted by radioactive materials, the gamma ray detector (a high-purity Germanium) detector needs to be cooled. As these devices are also affected by vibrations, pulse-tube technology has significant advantages.
Mirion Technologies uses Thales cryocoolers in their devices for reliability and vibration reasons, a testimonial of the field-proven reliability of our coolers can be found at their technical paper.