High transient-thermal-shock resistant nanochannel tungsten films

Developing high-performance tungsten plasma-facing materials for fusion reactors is an urgent task. In this paper, novel nanochannel structural W films prepared by magnetron sputtering deposition were irradiated using a high-power pulsed electron beam or ion beam to study their edge-localized modes, such as transient thermal shock resistance. Under electron beam irradiation, a 1 µm thick nanochannel W film with 150 watt power showed a higher absorbed power density related cracking threshold (0.28–0.43 GW/m²) than the commercial bulk W (0.16–0.28 GW/m² ) at room temperature. With ion beam irradiation with an energy density of 1 J/cm² for different pulses, the bulk W displayed many large cracks with the increase of pulse number, while only micro-crack networks with a width of tens of nanometers were found in the nanochannel W film. For the mechanism of the high resistance of nanochannel W films to transient thermal shock, a residual stress analysis was made by Grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD), and the results showed that the irradiated nanochannel W films had a much lower stress than that of the irradiated bulk W, which indicates that the nanochannel structure can release more stress, due to its special nanochannel structure and ability for the annihilation of irradiation induced defects.