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He bubble-driven growth of W fuzz during the interaction between H2/He plasmas and W materials

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Abstract

The tungsten (W) material as the divertor of fusion reactors is exposed to low-energy and high-flux He/H isotope irradiation, leading to the growth of fuzz layers. The W fuzz growth does not show any dependence on the plasma irradiation devices used; however, it is strongly dependent on He+ fluence and energy, irradiation temperature, and impurity level. When the incident He ions collide inside the dense fuzz layers with the extremely high specific area, their mean free path can be up to 690 nm. Up to now, the He bubble-driven W fuzz growth process is not entirely understood; however, it can be closely related to the surface bursting of He bubbles in the W surface layer and W surface erosion by He+ implantation. The formation of He bubbles can be attributed to the solute He diffusion into defects or bubbles, which is strongly affected by the temperature and He+ fluence. The W fuzz grows over the W surface, where the micro-stress caused by He bubbles in the W surface layer acts as the driving force. The W fuzz layer inhibits He+ implantation into W bulk, and provides an entire protection against the He+ erosion into W bulk beneath the fuzz layer. In this review article, the current status of experiment and theory are presented, and some of the remaining issues are discussed.

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Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [10]. Copyright 2020, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

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Fig. 4

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [10]. Copyright 2020, IAEA

Fig. 5

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [12]. Copyright 2020, Elsevier

Fig. 6

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [20]. Copyright 2013, Elsevier

Fig. 7

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [24]. Copyright 2013, Elsevier

Fig. 8

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [42]. Copyright 2020, Institute of Physics (IOP)

Fig. 9

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [43]. Copyright 2021, Elsevier

Fig. 10

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [44]. Copyright 2020, IAEA

Fig. 11

Reproduced with permission from Ref. [51]. Copyright 2018, IAEA

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFE0300106), the National Science Foundation of China (Grant No.11320101005), Liaoning Provincial Natural Science Foundation (Grant Nos. 20180510006 and 2019-ZD-0186), and Dalian Science and Technology Star Project (Grant No. 2017RQ149).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electrical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, China

    Wei-Yuan Ni, Chun-Jie Niu, Yang Zhang, Yun-Qiu Cui & Dong-Ping Liu

  2. School of Physics and Materials Engineering, Dalian Minzu University, Dalian, 116600, China

    Hong-Yu Fan

  3. Xi’an Rare Metal Materials Institute Co., Ltd, Xi’an, 710000, China

    Lu Liu

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  1. Wei-Yuan Ni
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Authors’ Contributions

Wei-Yuan Ni, Hong-Yu Fan and Dong-Pin Liu wrote the draft; Chun-Jie Niu and Yang Zhang collected the data; Yun-Qiu Cui and Lu Liu contributed to conceived the idea of the study. All authors contributed to the writing and revisions.

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Ni, WY., Fan, HY., Niu, CJ. et al. He bubble-driven growth of W fuzz during the interaction between H2/He plasmas and W materials. Tungsten 3, 393–405 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42864-021-00096-4

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