Fabrication of Rippled Plastic-Foam Targets Used for Hydrodynamic Instability Experiments

Combination rippled–flat targets can be used to measure Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) or Richtmyer-Meshkov (RM) instability in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments. To produce such targets, Br-doped polystyrene film with a sinusoidal pattern was fabricated, and the rippled film was combined with a foam by casting the foam solution onto the rippled film. Attempts at combining the target and the sinusoidal pattern are discussed. The morphology was characterized by optical microscopy and white-light interferometry. The rippled plastic-foam combinations were successfully fabricated using the mold technique. This paper discusses not only the production of the rippled plastic-foam combinations and the characterization of the sample morphology but also the film thicknesses.