Recent progress in compact, low power cryocoolers.

Compact, low power cryocoolers were initially developed for IR cameras in defense applications. The Mean Time to Failure (MTTF) of these coolers was 20 years ago, maximal in the order of thousands of hours while generating a cooling power of several hundreds of mW at 77 K. Today compact cryocoolers are available with MTTF’s of several years and cooling powers of several watts of cooling powers. This is enabling the use of these compact coolers in new applications such as 24/7 IRobservation equipment or cooling of non-IR sensors, and HTc devices. In this paper, Thales Cryogenics will present its progress achieved in the past years and the usage of compact cryocoolers in a wide range of applications being either at defense, space of civil applications.