So I've been watching a couple videos and done a little reading on magnetron sputtering. To me it seems like an optimum environment for these type of mid-energy reactions to occur, baring thermal considerations. A couple things were mentioned in the videos that worked with what I've read on picochemistry and binuclear atom formation through hydrogen.
The same device can be used to prepare fuel and burn it. Changes in the gas composition/pressure in the vacuum chamber and in the substances on the sputtering and deposition zones will potentially accomplish this. Higher but still <1 atm pressures can limit the sputtering sticking to the top of chamber during burning. When your burning that's not as much of a problem though so it becomes more of a confined plasma. The gas mix for burning would have to include hydrogen, some argon and maybe trace water vapor for good measure.
For the hydrogen's new good friends, we have practical metallized activated charcoal grains. Prepared by sputter coating it in layers of mostly nickel with some potassium (electron cloud stuff). This is a low tech way to engineer it down to the micro/nano scale. After you may load the metallized activated charcoal grains with hydrogen under pressure if experiments show more reliable performance that way.
Sputter deposition works by accelerating ions of a gas or gasses at a metal/material to move it's atoms onto a desired material. For our speculative modified purposes we are accelerating hydrogen ions at metal atoms in an electron dense environment to facilitate internal bonding reactions emitting probably hard UV to soft x-ray light energy. Also the magnetically confined plasma environment and gas mix chosen allows for dense dihydrogen or dihydrino particle formation as well. The magnets functioning well at potentially very high temperatures is something to work out. Extract energy in the form of steam, and/or heat pipes to a high performance alpha Stirling engine, should be emitting quite a large amount of light too. Extra plus if some form of endothermic reaction is triggerable through *H2(1/4) formed in plasma. This could make the alpha Stirling engine's tempurature differential more efficient and the magnets as well, with recycled cooling.
This can coat many things in metal!
Thoughts on LENR, pico-chemistry and using magnetron sputtering to achieve it?