Interaction of atomic and low-energy deuterium with tungsten pre-irradiated with self-ions

Abstract

Polycrystalline tungsten (W) specimens were pre-irradiated with self-ions to create identical samples with high density of defects up to ∼2.5 μm near the surface. Then, W specimens were exposed to either thermal atomic deuterium (D) beam with an incident energy of ∼0.2 eV or low energy D plasma with the incident energy varied between 5 and 200 eV at different sample temperatures. Each sample was exposed once at certain temperature and fluence. The D migration and accumulation in W were studied post-mortem by nuclear reaction method. It was shown that the rate of the D to occupy radiation-induced defects increases with increasing the incident energy, ion flux, and temperature. Experimental investigation was accompanied by modelling using the rate-equation model. Moreover, the analytical model was developed and benchmarked against numerical model. The calculations of the deuterium diffusion with trapping at radiation-induced defects in tungsten by analytical model are consistent with numerical calculations using rate-equation model. The data of reflection and penetration of atomic and low-energy D were taking from calculations using molecular dynamics (MD) with Juslin interatomic potentials and a binary collision code TRIM. MD calculations show an agreement with a binary collision code TRIM only in a very narrow range of deuterium energies between 1 and 20 eV. Incorporation of the data of reflection and penetration of deuterium in the macroscopic modelling has been done to verify the range of validity of calculations using MD and binary collision code TRIM by comparison of modelling results with experimental data. Modelling results are consistent with experiments using reflection and penetration data of D obtained from TRIM code for incident ion energy above 1 eV. Otherwise, the parameters obtained from MD should be incorporated in the rate-equation model to have a good agreement with the experiments.