Plasma-material Interaction Studies On Lithium And Lithiated Substrates During Compact Tokamak Operation

Abstract

The role of lithium on the modification of recycling regimes in fusion reactors has renewed interest of previous lithium supershot experiments carried out in TFTR. There is a need to understand the interaction between edge plasmas and lithiated plasma‐facing components (PFCs), which have the potential of enabling fusion reactors to operate at low‐recycling regimes. The Interaction of Materials with Particles and Components Testing (IMPACT) facility at Argonne National Laboratory is currently collaborating with Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) to conduct lithiated surface studies for the National Spherical Tokamak Experiment (NSTX) and the Current Drive eXperiment — Upgrade (CDX‐U). IMPACT has the necessary tools to perform experiments that diagnose the surface dynamics of lithium thin films on metallic and non‐metallic substrates, and can be monitored with multiple in‐situ techniques (LEISS, AES, QMS and XPS) capturing real‐time surface dynamics. Therefore, these techniques are available during ...