Material Science Developments Enhancing Excess of Power Reproducibility

Material science research activities have been carried out in order to increase the reproducibility of the excess of power production during electrochemical loading of palladium with deuterium. In the past a wide work was developed to obtain a metallurgical structure of the palladium able to ensure a significant loading of deuterium above the threshold of 0.95 (D/Pd atomic fraction). It was observed that the high loading of the Pd cathode with deuterium was a necessary condition to have the occurrence of the excess of power production. The more recent work was mainly oriented to optimize the material properties in order to have a significant improvement of the reproducibility of the excess of power. During the last campaign of experiments more than 50\% of the experienced cathodes produced excess of heat ranging from 30\% up to more than 100\% of the input.