Investigation of hydrogen behavior in tungsten exposed to high energy hydrogen plasma

Abstract

The pure tungsten samples are made by the powder metallurgy, and annealed at 1773K under a hydrogen–argon mixed atmosphere. The three samples are exposed to the hydrogen plasma of 30keV, hydrogen plasma irradiation fluences from 2×1017H+/cm2, 2×1018H+/cm2, 2×1019H+/cm2 for three hours about different samples. The effect of the hydrogen plasma irradiation is analyzed by the Scanning Electron Microscopy. The hydrogen bubbles are not seen on the surface of the tungsten samples. Local melts region and high damage region are seen in SEM photographs when fluence increases for 2×1019H+/cm2 (correlated with flux for 1.85×1015H+/cm2s). Some holes and pits can be only seen at melt region and high damage region from the surface morphology. Irradiation damage increases with fluence, and also affected by flux. Meanwhile, the experimental irradiations are simulated with the SRIM-2012 software, the temperature change trend to obtain through simulation is consistent with the damage levels of difference fluences, the higher the temperature rises, the greater the damage is.