Comparative study of deuterium retention in irradiated Eurofer and Fe–Cr from a new ion implantation materials facility

Anthony Hollingsworth*, Mikhail Lavrentiev, Rebecca Watkins, Alexandra Davies, Sophie Davies, Rob Smith, Daniel Mason, Aleksandra Baron-Wiechec, Zoltan Kollo, Jason Hess, Ionut Jepu, Jari Likonen, Kalle Heinola, Kenichiro Mizohata, Estelle Meslin, Marie-France Barthe, Anna Widdowson, Iwan Grech, Kathrin Abraham, Emilie PenderAlistair McShee, Yulia Martynova, Michaele Freisinger, Andree De Backer

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

    14 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    A new facility to study the interaction of hydrogen isotopes with nuclear fusion-relevant first wall materials, and their retention and release, has been produced. The new facility allows for implanting a range of gases into samples, including tritium. An accurate study of isotope effects, such as the isotopic exchange in damaged microstructure, has previously been difficult due to a background signal of light hydrogen. This new capability will allow virtually background free measurements using tritium and deuterium. The design and build of this facility are described and commissioning results are presented. Within the UKAEA-led tritium retention in controlled and evolving microstructure (TRiCEM) project, this facility is used for the comparative study of deuterium retention in self-ion irradiated Eurofer steel and Fe–Cr alloy. Self-ion bombardment with energies of 0.5 MeV is used to mimic the defects created by neutrons in fusion power plants and the created traps are then filled with deuterium in the new facility. Implanted samples are analysed using thermal desorption spectrometry (TDS), secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), and transmission electron microscopy. Results on the total deuterium content as a function of time, TDS spectra and SIMS analysis are presented. A comparison of the results for Eurofer and Fe–Cr revealed several differences. While some of them may be due to experimental details like different time delays between exposure and analysis, others, such as deuterium retention as function of dose, might be genuine and require further studies.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number016024
    Number of pages10
    JournalNuclear Fusion
    Volume60
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2020
    MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

    Funding

    This work was supported by EUROfusion Enabling Research project TRiCEM, Tritium Retention in Controlled and Evolving Microstructure and part-funded by the EPSRC Program [grant number: EP/P012450/1]. This work has been carried out within the framework of the EUROfusion Consortium and has received funding from the Euratom research and training program 2014-2018 and 2019-2020 under grant agreement No. 633053.

    Keywords

    • deuterium
    • tritium
    • Eurofer
    • iron-chromium
    • implanting
    • retention

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