Elizabeth Nicole Wilcut Sciences
Heavy Fermion Refrigerator
Elizabeth plans to design, construct and test a prototype of a low temperature refrigerator, in order to demonstrate an efficient and simple method for cooling to temperatures below 1 Kelvin. Currently, dilution refrigerators are used to achieve such low temperatures, a technology that is complicated, expensive and experimentally demanding. By pioneering the use of a refrigerator that uses a flowing electrical current through superconductor junctions, Elizabeth’s prototype will improve on the cooling power of some preliminary electronic refrigerators by more than four orders of magnitude and create a technology that has the potential to become commercially viable and scientifically important in fields such as physics, material sciences and astronomy.