Sputtering yield reduction for nano-columnar W surfaces under D ion irradiation

Funding Information: This work has been carried out within the framework of the EUROfusion Consortium, funded by the European Union via the Euratom Research and Training Programme (Grant Agreement No 101052200 —EUROfusion). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the European Commission can be held responsible for them. Financial support has also been provided by KKKÖ (commission for the coordination of fusion research in Austria at the Austrian Academy of Sciences – ÖAW). Computer time granted by the IT Center for Science—CSC—Finland and the Finnish Grid and Cloud Infrastructure (persistent identifier urn:nbn:fi:research-infras-2016072533) is gratefully acknowledged. The research leading to these results has partially received funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation , through the project RADIAFUS V, Grant No. PID2019-105325RB-C32 , and the Comunidad de Madrid (CAM) Convenio Plurianual con la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid en la línea de actuación Programa de Excelencia para el Profesorado Universitario of the CAM. The authors also acknowledge TU Wien Bibliothek for financial support through its Open Access Funding Programme. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s)This study investigates the sputtering properties of nano-columnar tungsten surfaces under 2 keV D2+ irradiation. It was conducted both by performing experiments in a highly sensitive quartz crystal microbalance setup as well as by numerical methods using two simulation codes called SPRAY and SDTrimSP-3D. A key question was whether the strong sputtering yield reduction observed in previous studies under 2 keV Ar+ irradiation is maintained when using a much lighter ion species like deuterium. For the latter, a substantially larger projected range in the material has to be expected. Therefore, a total confinement of the ion-solid interaction within the W nano-columns cannot be assumed a priori. However, both the experiments and the numerical simulations showed in good agreement that the geometrically induced sputtering yield reduction is still observed to the same extent despite the increased range of ions in the material. Thus, a potential application of such nano-columnar tungsten surfaces as plasma facing components in future nuclear fusion devices is not affected.Peer reviewe