I agree, if Be can be avoided that would be great.
However, for a device hoping for good fusion yields you need to be very careful that no high-Z ions can be eroded off and pollute the hottest part of the plasma as they will cause rapid cooling. But more importantly the pinch X-ray flux will be orders of magnitude higher than any ‘low power’ studies done before, and we need to be able to recover the X-rays in the onion. Which means the anode must be as transparent to them as possible, to avoid shadowing a large portion of the collecting area.
Having said that I wasn’t aware Molybdenum had been studied before – do you know the source paper(s)?
