R&D activities for the design of the MITICA Plasma Driver Plate manufacturing process via explosion bonding technique

Abstract

The back plate of the MITICA plasma source, named Plasma Driver Plate (PDP), will be protected from the impact of the highly energetic back-streaming positive ions (BSI+), generated inside the accelerator, by a 1.0mm thick molybdenum layer that will be joined by Explosion Bonding (EB) technique to the copper heat sink.This technology has been investigated and used for manufacturing prototypes, demonstrating very high strength of the obtained molybdenum–copper interface.The production of the shaped edge profile of the driver-hole, after the EB, is an open point. In order to demonstrate the possibility to produce the PDP by explosion bonding, the manufacturing of a full scale prototype of the area just around one of the PDP driver-holes was identified as the road to address most of the manufacturing issues.Elasto-plastic finite element analyses have been carried out to improve the hole rim geometry and the process parameters of all the manufacturing steps. A full scale prototype of the PDP driver-hole has been manufactured and tested.This contribution gives an overview of the R&D activities carried out to address the main open issues, to define the PDP component detailed geometry and its manufacturing processes, via EB technique.