Quantitative plasma-fuel and impurity profiling in thick plasma-deposited layers by means of micro ion beam analysis and SIMS

The operation of the Joint European Torus (JET) with full-carbon wall during the last decades has proven the importance of material re-deposition processes in remote areas of the tokamak. The thickness of the deposits in shadowed areas can reach 1 mm. The main constituent is carbon, with little inclusion of Inconel components. Atomic fractions Be/C and D/C can locally reach 1. Three methods were used to study thick deposits on JET divertor surfaces: (i) NRA analysis with a 15 μm wide, 3 MeV 3He ion microbeam on a polished cross section of the layer to determine the concentration distribution of D, Be and C and the distribution of Ni by particle induced X-ray emission; (ii) elastic proton scattering (EPS) from the top of the layers with a broad proton beam at 3.5 and 4.6 MeV. These methods were absolutely calibrated using thick elemental targets. (iii) Depth profiling of D, Be and Ni was done with secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), sputtering the layers from the surface. The three methods are complementary. The thickest layers are accessible only by microbeam mapping of the cross sections, albeit with limited spatial resolution. The SIMS has the best depth resolution, but is difficult for absolute quantification and is limited in accessible depth. The probed depth with proton backscattering is limited to about 30 μm. The combination of all three methods provided a coherent picture of the layer composition. It was possible to correlate the SIMS profiling results to quantitative data obtained by the microbeam method.