Deuterium retention and desorption behavior of W-Ta-Cr-V high entropy alloy

Deuterium retention and desorption behavior of W-Ta-Cr-V films under deuterium plasma irradiation were studied. The W-Ta-Cr-V films were prepared on the molybdenum (Mo) substrate by magnetron sputtering. Subsequently, all films annealed at 1000 °C were exposed to deuterium plasma at a flux of 8.13 × 10¹⁹ D/m²·s for 9 h to achieve an irradiation fluence of 2.63 ×10²⁴ D/m². Electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) was used to characterize the texture and average grain size of films. Doppler broadening spectrometry of positron annihilation (DBS-PA) was carried out with an energy-variable slow positron beam to detect the concentration of vacancy-type defects in the films. The results suggest that there are fewer vacancy-type defects inside W-Ta-Cr-V grains. Deuterium retention and the desorption behavior of W-Ta-Cr-V were studied by compared to pure tungsten films. In the 300–800 K temperature range, the peaks of thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS) of W-Ta-Cr-V films are substantially consistent with that of the W films. Notably, in the range of 800 K-1000 K, W-Ta-Cr-V film has no thermal desorption peak. We attribute this to the large lattice distortion and low vacancy formation energy, which inhibit the growth of voids inside the grains of W-Ta-Cr-V films. The total deuterium retention of W-Ta-Cr-V films is compared with that of W films. It is measured by TDS that the deuterium retention of W-Ta-Cr-V films is nearly 5 times that of W films. Based on the analysis of the TDS spectra, the higher deuterium retention in W-Ta-Cr-V films is due to the more grain boundary defects.