Deuterium retention in heavy-ion and helium-ion sequentially irradiated tungsten

Abstract

Neutron irradiation as well as the presence of helium (He) significantly affects fuel inventory in plasma-facing materials. To investigate the synergistic effects of neutron and He irradiation on deuterium (D) retention behaviors in tungsten, heavy- and He-ion sequentially irradiation experiments were performed with various He fluence and/or heavy-ion damage levels, and then the samples were exposed to low-energy D plasmas at 450 K. It is shown that even a low He concentration of 0.5 atomic parts per million (appm) increases D concentration in the heavy-ion damaged region, which increases further with increasing He concentration under the parameters selected in this work (up to a maximum He concentration of 2.1 appm). The total D inventory in tungsten bulk also increases with He fluence due to the increase in D concentration both in the heavy-ion damaged region and the region irradiated by He-ion only. Furthermore, heavy-ion and He-ion successive irradiation slightly increases D retention in tungsten compared to the individual He ions irradiation. Similar to single heavy-ion damaged tungsten, the saturation of D retention is observed as heavy-ion irradiation damage above 0.2 dpa at a fixed He fluence.