Preliminary studies on the emulation of 14Â MeV neutron irradiation in SiC with heavy ions

The feasibility to emulate fusion neutron irradiation, especially for the first wall of fusion reactors, by ion irradiation is studied. It is found that heavy ions with energies up to 300 MeV cannot produce weighted primary recoil spectra Wp(T) similar to those of 14 MeV neutrons in SiC. On the contrary, the weighted secondary recoil spectra Ws(T) of 14 MeV neutrons lie within the domain among the Wp(T) of 1, 5, 10 MeV Si and C ions in SiC, and match well with the Wp(T) at the Bragg peak region of mixed ion irradiation with 30% 10 MeV Si and 70% 4.8 MeV C ions in SiC, which indicates that ion irradiation with several MeV is sufficient to produce damaged regions along its track with damage distribution similar to that among the damaged regions produced by secondary recoils along the track of primary recoils in the case of 14 MeV neutron irradiation. The results suggest that it is possible to emulate the fusion neutron irradiation with low energy heavy ions on the order of few MeV.