35 years after the original claim of “cold fusion”, UBC experiment provides repeatable proof that electrochemistry at the eV scale can affect nuclear fusion at the MeV scale
VANCOUVER, B.C., August 20, 2025 — A team of researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) has achieved a significant milestone in the pursuit of nuclear fusion for energy applications with the first-ever reproducible evidence that electrochemical methods can increase nuclear fusion reaction rates. The landmark research, published in Nature, was performed at room temperature and pressure and motivates further scientific investigation and advancement.
Led by Dr. Curtis Berlinguette, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical & Biological Engineering at UBC, and supported by the Thistledown Foundation, the team of 15 researchers demonstrated a 15% increase in deuterium–deuterium (D–D) fusion reaction rates with electrochemistry. Deuterium (D) is a stable isotope of hydrogen commonly used in nuclear fusion research. The team achieved these reaction rates by designing and building a bespoke benchtop-scale particle accelerator called the “Thunderbird Reactor”. This reactor is designed to drive a plasma of deuterium ions into a palladium metal target. On the other side of a target, electricity is used to drive more deuterium fuel into the target.
“For decades, many people have sought to prove that electrochemistry can affect nuclear fusion rates,” said Berlinguette, who leads the Berlinguette Research Group. “While there have been previous claims of such an effect, none have been able to reproduce the results for validation by others. Our work is important because it provides the first experimental setup to test claims that electrochemical loading of hydrogen isotopes into metal targets can affect nuclear fusion rates. We hope this experiment becomes a shared foundation that invites open, critical, and creative inquiry into the science of nuclear fusion and upon which the scientific community can continue to build.”
Nuclear fusion is where the nuclei of multiple light atoms combine to form a heavier nucleus and consequently release energy. This process powers all active stars, including our sun, and holds enormous potential as a clean energy source. However, to be viable for energy applications, nuclear fusion reaction rates must be high enough to produce significantly more energy than they consume. While the Thunderbird Reactor did not generate a net energy gain, the electrochemical increase in nuclear fusion rates presents an entirely new avenue of exploration toward that ultimate goal.
The research team’s work builds upon a previous multi-institutional research effort convened and funded by Google from 2015 to 2019 to re-evaluate cold fusion, a hypothesized form of nuclear fusion occurring at or near room temperature. Cold fusion was first claimed in 1989 but quickly dismissed by the scientific community due to a lack of reproducible evidence. The multi-institutional research effort, which included Dr. Berlinguette and Dr. Thomas Schenkel, published a Perspective article in Nature in 2019 and called upon the scientific community to develop a “reference experiment” with unambiguous evidence that can be independently verified and advanced.
The present research answers that call with a reference experiment to support the specific claim that electrochemistry can be leveraged to increase nuclear reaction rates. The research team emphasized that while the observed enhancement in power output does not imply a path to energy production, it establishes a rigorous experimental system for investigating how to increase nuclear reaction rates. As such, it provides a valuable testbed for future theoretical and experimental work in an historically controversial field.
“With these results,” said Berlinguette, “we invite the broader scientific community—including those in plasma physics, materials science, and electrochemistry—to engage with this reference experiment and together advance the nuclear fusion sciences.”
Read the full Nature article: Kuo-Yi Chen, Jannis Maiwald, Phil A. Schauer, Sergey Issinski, Fatima H. Garcia, Ryan Oldford, Luca Egoriti, Shota Higashino, Aref E. Vakili, Yunzhou Wen, Joseph Z. X. Koh, Thomas Schenkel, Monika Stolar, Amanda K. Brown, & Curtis P. Berlinguette. “Electrochemical loading enhances deuterium fusion rates in a metal target” Nature 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09042-7