Effect of surface quality on hydrogen/helium irradiation behavior in tungsten

As the plasma facing material in the nuclear fusion reactor, tungsten has to bear the irradiation impact of high energy particles. The surface quality of tungsten may affect its irradiation resistance, and even affect the service life of fusion reactor. In this paper, tungsten samples with different surface quality were polished by mechanical processing, subsequently conducted by D-2(+) implantation and thermal desorption. D-2(+) implantation was performed at room temperature (RT) with the irradiation dose of 1 x 10(21) D-2(+)/m(2) by 5 keV D-2(+) ions, and thermal desorption spectroscopy measurements were done from RT to 900 K. In addition, He irradiation was also performed by 50 eV He+ ions energy with the fluxes of 5.5 x 10(21) m(-2)s(-1) and 1.5 x 10(22) m(-2)s(-1), respectively. Results reveal that the hydrogen/helium irradiation behavior are both related to surface quality. Samples with high surface quality has superior D(2+)retention behavior with less D-2 retained after implantation. However, such samples are more likely to generate fuzzes on the surface after helium irradiation. Different morphologies (smooth, wavy, pyramids) after helium irradiation also demonstrates that the surface morphology is related to tungsten crystallographic orientation. (C) 2021 Korean Nuclear Society, Published by Elsevier Korea LLC.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the influence of surface quality on the irradiation behavior of tungsten. The experimental results show that tungsten samples with high surface quality exhibit better retention behavior in hydrogen irradiation but are prone to surface roughening after helium irradiation. Additionally, different surface morphologies are related to the crystallographic orientation of tungsten.