In situ deuterium inventory measurements of a-C:D layers on tungsten in TEXTOR by laser induced ablation spectroscopy

Abstract

Laser induced ablation spectroscopy (LIAS) is a diagnostic to provide temporally and spatially resolved in situ measurements of tritium retention and material migration in order to characterize the status of the first wall in future fusion devices. In LIAS, a ns-laser pulse ablates the first nanometres of the first wall plasma-facing components into the plasma edge. The resulting line radiation by plasma excitation is observed by spectroscopy. In the case of the full ionizing plasma and with knowledge of appropriate photon efficiencies for the corresponding line emission the amount of ablated material can be measured in situ. We present the photon efficiency for the deuterium Balmer α-line resulting from ablation in TEXTOR by performing LIAS on amorphous hydrocarbon (a-C:D) layers deposited on tungsten substrate of thicknesses between 0.1 and 1.1 μm. An experimental inverse photon efficiency of was determined. This value is a factor 5 larger than predicted values from the ADAS database for atomic injection of deuterium under TEXTOR plasma edge conditions and about twice as high, assuming normal wall recycling and release of molecular deuterium and break-up of D2 via the molecular ion which is usually observed at the high temperature tokamak edge (Te > 30 eV).