North America · USA
Monday, June 15, 2026
LPP Fusion
Dense plasma focus (DPF)
Magneto-Inertial
Hydrogen-Boron (p-¹¹B)
Undisclosed
TBD
Investor brief
Dense plasma focus — the highest-temperature plasma ever made
Executive Summary
LPP Fusion pursues aneutronic proton-boron fusion in the dense plasma focus (DPF) — a remarkably simple device in which a fast electrical discharge between coaxial electrodes self-organises into a tiny, dense, extremely hot plasmoid. LPP holds the published record for ion temperature in any fusion device: 1.8 billion °C.
Strategic Thesis
DPF can self-organise into a small, dense, hot plasmoid where p-¹¹B becomes feasible — at a hardware budget orders of magnitude below tokamaks.
Technical & Economic Profile
Architecture class
Magneto-Inertial, Pulsed & Alternative Cores
Pulsed compression schemes that explicitly avoid massive static superconducting magnets, prioritising upfront-capex reductions and modular replicability.
Reactor design
Dense Plasma Focus
Core tech focus
p-¹¹B aneutronic dense-plasma focus
Key milestones
Multi-decade DPF research lineage.
How LPP Fusion sits vs peers
Dense plasma focus targeting p-¹¹B aneutronic — one of the smallest device footprints in the entire industry, betting that compactness alone resolves the LCOE problem.
Class engineering bottlenecks
- Pulsed-rep-rate engineering: sustaining 1–10 Hz operation with millisecond-scale energy recovery.
- For aneutronic FRC (TAE), bremsstrahlung scales as Pbrems ∝ Tₑ^½, capping Pfus/Pbrems at ~0.2–0.3 without non-thermal ion distributions.
- For MTF (General Fusion), liquid-metal vortex stability under pneumatic shock and synchronisation of dozens of pistons.
- For sheared-flow Z-pinch (Zap), maintaining kink-stability at commercial pulse repetition rates.
LCOE drivers
- Elimination of large superconducting magnet assemblies removes the single largest capex line in tokamaks.
- Direct-conversion architectures bypass the 35–40% Rankine/Brayton thermodynamic ceiling, pushing net plant efficiency past 60–70%.
- Liquid-metal first-walls (General Fusion) eliminate first-wall replacement cycles entirely.
Sourced from the 2026 Global Fusion Energy Comparison — triple-product thresholds, direct-energy-conversion architecture, materials limits, and the LCOE / Qecon framework.
Founding Team
Eric Lerner has stood as one of the most prominent, independent alternative voices in the global fusion landscape for decades. As the founder and chief scientist of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (LPP Fusion), Lerner rejected mainstream magnetic confinement approaches in favor of an extraordinarily compact, low-cost system: the Dense Plasma Focus (DPF). Utilizing unique, self-organizing plasma instabilities instead of fighting against them, Lerner's lean, physics-first approach aims to achieve the multi-billion-degree temperatures required to extract clean energy directly from a hydrogen-boron (p-11B) fuel cycle.
Eric Lerner
BA in Physics, Columbia University; graduate research, University of Maryland
The Problem
Global electricity demand is entering an unprecedented growth phase driven by AI infrastructure, data centers, transport electrification, industrial decarbonization, water desalination, and advanced manufacturing. Solar suffers intermittency, wind capacity-factor variability, natural gas carbon emissions, conventional nuclear cost and deployment speed, and batteries energy-density and duration limits. The world requires a new source of clean, dispatchable baseload energy. Fusion represents the ultimate energy source — the challenge is making it commercially practical.
Focus Fusion-2B Dense Plasma Focus
The DPF discharge naturally compresses plasma into a sub-millimeter plasmoid with extreme density and temperature — exactly the conditions where p-¹¹B becomes feasible. The hardware is orders of magnitude smaller and cheaper than a tokamak.
FF-2B Device
Operating dense plasma focus reactor with beryllium electrodes, designed to push ion temperatures into the p-¹¹B ignition regime.
Record Ion Temperature
1.8 × 10⁹ K reported in 2016 — the highest ion temperature ever measured in a fusion device.
Aneutronic Path
Charged alpha products from p-¹¹B can be converted directly to electricity by simple electrode arrays.
Fuel Strategy
Hydrogen-Boron (p-¹¹B)
Aneutronic fuel — no neutrons, no radioactive waste, no tritium logistics.
Product Platform
FF-2B
Current research dense plasma focus device.
Energy Conversion
Direct (Inductive)
Aneutronic
Direct — bypasses Carnot
Dense plasma focus (DPF) compresses p-¹¹B fuel to fusion conditions; the resulting alpha-particle beam decelerates through an inductive collector, generating electricity directly.
Conversion chain
- 1p-¹¹B plasma compressed in DPF plasmoid
- 2Collimated alpha-particle beam emitted axially
- 3Beam decelerated by ring electrodes → induced current
- 4DC electricity → conditioning → grid
The DPF device is small, low-capex, and inherently pulsed. Aneutronic + direct conversion gives a uniquely simple plant architecture — but requires ignition conditions never demonstrated at net gain.
Economic Vision
A power-plant-class DPF would cost orders of magnitude less than a tokamak. The unit economics depend on shot rate and electrode lifetime rather than reactor scale.
Vision
Compact, low-cost aneutronic fusion accessible everywhere.
Mission
Prove p-¹¹B fusion in a desktop-scale device.
Engineering Bottlenecks
- Electrode erosion and impurity influx
- Scaling shot rate to power-plant level
Milestone Timeline
2016
Reported 1.8 × 10⁹ K ion temperature
The description above reflects LPP Fusion's publicly stated technology goals, roadmap and architecture. Many elements — particularly net-energy gain at scale, advanced fuel cycles, and grid-relevant economics — remain ambitious objectives that have not yet been demonstrated commercially anywhere in the fusion industry. Forward-looking statements should be treated as engineering targets, not certainties.
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Citations & Sources
Academic & financial rigor- [01]
The Global Fusion Industry in 2025
Fusion Industry Association · Jul 2025
- [02]
Company disclosures and press releases
LPP Fusion
- [03]
Peer-reviewed plasma physics literature
Journal of Plasma Physics / Nuclear Fusion