Molecular dynamics study of the hydrogen and helium interaction in tungsten

XC Li and T Lu and XD Pan and YP Xu and GJ Niu and Q Xu and HS Zhou and GN Luo, NUCLEAR INSTRUMENTS & METHODS IN PHYSICS RESEARCH SECTION B-BEAM INTERACTIONS WITH MATERIALS AND ATOMS, 455, 114-117 (2019).

DOI: 10.1016/j.nimb.2019.06.033

Tungsten (W) and W alloys are regarded as the most promising candidates for plasma facing materials (PFMs), which will be widely used in the next generation of fusion reactors. However, blistering in W-PFM induced by extremely high fluxes of low-energy hydrogen (H) and helium (He) ions irradiation will seriously influence the plasma stability and limits the lifetime of PFM. We systematically investigate the interaction between H and He interaction in W using molecular dynamics (MD) calculations. The vacancy clusters can capture a large amount of H/He, and the H-He- vacancy clusters have much higher binding energy to He than to H. The binding energy of H-He-vacancy clusters to vacancy/W is positive, and H-He-vacancy clusters have strong trapping of W atoms and vacancies. He will strongly affect the H behavior in W, He atoms and He cluster will trap H atoms, thereby preventing the diffusion of H in W.

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