Recent development in compact and reliable cryocoolers at Thales Cryogenics

Cryocoolers are an enabling technology for devices cooling. This could be either the cooling of spectroscopy sensors, cooling of compact HTS devices or to avoid refilling of cryostat filled with liquid Nitrogen. In the recent years - pushed by market needs - enormous progress has been achieved in compactness and reliability of cryogenic coolers capable of delivering cooling powers between 100mW and 15W at 77K. Utilizing both the Stirling and pulse-tube principles Thales Cryogenics is manufacturing several thousands of coolers per year which are being used from very compact hand held thermal imagers to complex satellite programs such as MeteoSat Third Generation. These coolers could also be ideal for cooling various HTS applications. In the presentation Thales will present latest developments in compactness with their SWaP coolers, coolers with low exported vibrations and high efficient coolers. Also the latest update on cooler reliability achieved today and expected in the future will be discussed. Based on its existing product portfolio Thales has also developed a Cryogenic Test Bench as a flexible tool that can be used by universities or research institutes for the characterisation of the performance of devices at programmable cryogenic temperatures between 60 and 150 K. The design philosophy behind this tool and its possible utilisation will also be presented