Formation mechanism of bubbles and holes on tungsten surface with low-energy and high-flux helium plasma irradiation in NAGDIS-II

A systematic study on the formation mechanism of micron-sized He bubbles and holes in powder metallurgy tungsten due to helium ion irradiation with an ion energy below 30 eV and a particle flux above 10(22) m(-2) s(-1) has been performed in the linear divertor plasma simulator NAGDIS-II. Holes are formed with incident helium ion energy above 5 eV, which could be related to the surface barrier potential energy for He penetrating into tungsten. Tungsten surface temperature strongly influences the number and size of hole. Above 1600 K, bubbles and/or holes with several hundreds nano-meter diameter appear on the tungsten surface. Single crystal tungsten, which has much fewer intrinsic defects than powder metallurgy tungsten, was also irradiated by He plasmas. There is no qualitative difference in the hole formation between the two grades of tungsten. Bubble and hole formation mechanisms are discussed based on the experimental results. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.