Mechanisms of retention and blistering in near-surface region of tungsten exposed to high flux deuterium plasmas of tens of eV

Shu, Wataru; Luo, G.; Yamanishi, Toshihiko

The mechanisms of retention and blistering in the near-surface region of tungsten exposed to high glux deuterium plasmas of tens of eV were studied with a variety of techniques, such as XRD, TEM, SEM, TDS, NRA and ERDA. The results of small angle XRD at a fixed incident angle of 1.5 indicated that within the experimental error there was a zero change in the lattice parameter after the plasma exposure. This implies that deuterium does not exist in the lattice interstitial sites, but instead forms a deuterium-vacancy complex and then clusters and further bubbles (deuterium molecules in vacancy clusters and voids) in near-surface region. Cross-sectional TEM observations showed that small blisters with a diameter of around 30 nm and nano-cracks formed in the near-surface region before the formation of larger blisters with diameters of up to a few microns (comparable to grain size). The TDS results strongly indicated that deuterium existed in the molecular form in tungsten after the plasma exposure. The NRA and ERDA results suggest that the maximum atomic ratio of deuterium against tungsten reached as high as 1-2% in the near-surface region. These evidences suggest that crystal defects like vacancies should be generated due to lowering of the formation energy of vacancies by the intrusion of a great number of hydrogen isotope atoms into the near-surface region of tungsten.