Electrostatic levitation furnace for the international space station

JAXA has been utilizing Japanese Experiment Module "Kibo" of the International Space Station (ISS) since August 2008 and has obtained significant results through its first phase utilization. The primary purpose of this phase was to examine Kibo's capability as a space laboratory as well as to conduct selected scientific themes. In the second phase which began in 2010, we plan to challenge variety of themes to contribute to the society such as practical researches aiming industrial applications, technology demonstration for future space activities, and cultural and educational precursor experiments. The Electrostatic Levitation Furnace (ELF) is one of the experiment facilities for materials science, which will be on board Kibo in the near future. A unique feature of ELF is to levitate a sample material inside the furnace by means of Coulomb's force throughout the fusion/solidification experiments. By utilizing this capability JAXA plans to study thermo-physical properties of many kinds of the oxides which cannot be measured on earth. In addition, creation of new materials is another objective of space experiments using ELF. In the absence of gravity ELF can generate the ultimate environment for the materials, which is expected to contribute to a new discovery. This paper shows a detailed feature of ELF and its capability as well as typical experiments to be conducted in Kibo for the purposes of scientific research and industrial applications.