Advanced Manufacturing of Printed Melt Wire Chips for Cheap, Compact Passive In-Pile Temperature Sensors

Melt wires are a passive sensor used to determine peak temperatures. Traditional melt wires are commonly used in test reactor experiments, such as in the Advanced Test Reactor. However, the conditions within a reactor present significant challenges towards test design, due to space limitations and the harsh environment. For example, some test capsules have only a couple millimeters in diameter available for instrumentation, which is too small to accommodate a traditional melt wire package. To enable instrumentation for space-limited applications, peak temperature sensors have been developed using additive manufacture to form printed melt wires. This paper reports on the design and fabrication of miniaturized melt wire chips with printed melt wires. This study advances the development of unique, compact temperature sensors capable of sensing user specified temperature ranges within the harsh environment of irradiation testing.