Development and experimental study of beryllium window for ITER radial X-ray camera

• The thickness of the beryllium foil is chosen as 80 μm to guarantee its safety under high pressure differential in accident events.
• Using low purity of beryllium as the transition material, the effect of thermal stress caused by diffusion bonding process can be reduced.
• Sealing ring and honeycomb-like supports are designed and used in the mechanical clamped beryllium window to enhance its sealing and safety performance.
• The beryllium windows have good performance under severe working conditions like high temperature baking, vibration or impact load.

Radial X-ray camera (RXC) is a diagnostic device planned to be installed in the ITER Equatorial Port #12. Beryllium window will be installed between the inner and outer camera of RXC, which severs as the transmission photocathode substrate and also the vacuum isolation component. In this paper the design and manufacture process of two types of beryllium windows were introduced. Although 50 μm thickness of beryllium foil is the best choice, the 80 μm one with X-ray threshold of 1.34 keV was selected for safety consideration. Using the intermediate layer (low purity of beryllium) between the beryllium foil and the stainless steel base flange is an effective strategy to limit the welding thermal deformation and thermal stress of the thin foil caused by bonding between different materials. By using ANSYS software, the feasibility of the aperture design was analyzed and validated. Metal sealing ring was applied in the mechanical clamped beryllium window for its good stability under high temperature and neutron radiation. Although both of the hollow metal sealing ring with 0.03 mm silver coating and the pure silver sealing ring can satisfy the sealing requirement, the later one was chosen to produce the final product. Two hours 240 °C high temperature baking test, two hours 3.3 Hz vibration test and fatigue test were performed on the two types of beryllium windows. Based on the tests results, the two types of beryllium windows could stand the high temperature baking during the wall conditioning phase of ITER tokamak and the vibration during transportation without causing large leakage. Both of the two types of beryllium windows could bear impact load (0.1 MPa pressure difference) for many times without failure.