Study of deuterium retention on lithiated tungsten exposed to high-flux deuterium plasma using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

• Deuterium retention effects on both pure tungsten and lithiated tungsten have been investigated in the linear plasma simulator Magnum-PSI by an in-situ laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy.
• The lithiation can inhibit the blistering on tungsten surface.
• The re-deposition of lithium results in the formation of chemical state of Li2CO3 and tungsten oxides on a fresh surface of tungsten.

Tungsten is under consideration for use as a plasma-facing material in the divertor region of ITER. Lithiation can significantly improve plasma performance in long-pulse tokamaks like EAST. The investigation of lithiated tungsten is important for understanding the lithium conditioning effects for EAST, where tungsten will be used as a plasma-facing material. In this paper, a few important issues of lithiated tungsten interacting with high-flux deuterium plasma have been studied, such as the effect of lithiation on deuterium retention, the profile of elemental distribution, and the chemical state of lithiated tungsten. Deuterium retention inside both pure and lithiated tungsten has been investigated for the first time in the linear plasma simulator Magnum-PSI by in-situ laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS). The results indicate that, after deuterium plasma exposure, deuterium retention could be saturated in the lithiation layer, and the lithium in the lithiated layer is chemically bound with deuterium. Moreover, the lithiation can inhibit the blistering on the tungsten surface. These results can be valuable for the application of LIBS as a diagnostic technique for plasma-facing components of tokamaks.