Chamber wall materials response to pulsed ions at power-plant level fluences

Candidate dry-wall materials for the reactor chambers of future laser-driven Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) power plants have been exposed to ion pulses from RHEPP-1, located at Sandia National Laboratories. These pulses simulate the MeV-level ion pulses with fluences of up to 20 J/cm2 that can be expected to impinge on the first wall of such future plants. Various forms of tungsten and tungsten alloy were subjected to up to 1600 pulses, usually while being heated to 600 °C. Other metals were exposed as well. Thresholds for roughening and material removal, and evolution of surface morphology were measured and compared with code predictions for materials response. Powder-metallurgy (PM) tungsten is observed to undergo surface roughening and subsurface crack formation that evolves over hundreds of pulses, and which can occur both below and above the melt threshold. This roughening is worse than for other metals, and worse than for either tungsten alloyed with rhenium (W25Re), or for CVD and single-crystal forms of tungsten. Carbon, particularly the form used in composite material, appears to suffer material loss well below its sublimation point. Some engineered materials were also investigated. It appears that some modification to PM tungsten is required for its successful use in a reactor environment.