Application of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy for characterization of material deposits and tritium retention in fusion devices

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is discussed as a possible method to characterize the composition, tritium retention and amount of material deposits on the first wall of fusion devices. The principle of the technique is the ablation of the co-deposited layer by a laser pulse with P (power density) ≥ 0.5 GW/cm2 and the spectroscopic analysis of the light emitted by the laser induced plasma. The typical spatial extension of the laser plasma plume is in the order of 1 cm with typical plasma parameters of ne ≈ 3 × 1022 m−3 and Te ≈ 1-2 eV averaged over the plasma lifetime which is below 1 μs. In this study “ITER-Like” mixed deposits with a thickness of about 2 μm and consisting of a mixture of W/Al/C and D on bulk tungsten substrates have been analyzed by LIBS to measure the composition and hydrogen isotopes content at different laser energies, ranging from about 2 J/cm2 (0.3 GW/cm2) to about 17 J/cm2 (2.4 GW/cm2) for 7 ns laser pulses. It is found that the laser energies above about 7 J/cm2 (1 GW/cm2) are needed to achieve the full removal of the deposit layer and identify a clear interface between the deposit and the bulk tungsten substrate by applying 15-20 laser pulses while hydrogen isotopes decrease strongly after the first laser pulse. Under these conditions, the evolution of the spectral line intensities of W/Al/C/hydrogen can be used to evaluate the layer composition.