September 9, 2016
Let's indeed not forget the important role of Mizuno.
Mizuno has been focussing on the combination of Deuterium, Palladium and Nickel for many years.
I remember personal discussions with Mizuno whether it would be more efficient to use Argon as a means to sputter a Nickel layer on the Palladium target. Unfortunately Mizuno's lab budget and facilities did not allow to expand and enhance these experiments based on D, Pd and Ni.
In parallel Iwamura and other Japanese researchers at various universities also looked at this D, Pd and Ni combination.
In fact they found that both combinations of Hydrogen, Copper, Nickel and Deuterium, Palladium, Nickel had similar excess heat effects. More recently Iwamura and others made a clear choice to go for H, Ni and Cu where it comes to development of commercially viable prototypes. This choice seems logical. When successful, the market demand will be so large that the use of palladium could be problematic due to its limited availability (and price).