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Title: Effects of surface vacancy-adatom pair formation on PFC tungsten surface morphological response

Journal Article · · Nuclear Fusion

We report a simulation study of the effect of He-irradiation-induced surface vacancy-adatom pair formation on the surface morphological evolution of plasma-facing component (PFC) tungsten and examine a number of factors that impact such evolution. Our analysis is based on self-consistent dynamical simulations according to an atomistically-informed, continuum-scale surface evolution model that has been developed following a hierarchical multiscale modeling strategy and can access the spatiotemporal scales of relevance to fuzz formation. The model accounts for the flux of surface adatoms generated as a result of the surface vacancy-adatom pair formation effect upon He implantation, which contributes to the anisotropic growth of surface nanostructural features due to the different rates of adatom diffusion along and across step edges of islands on the tungsten surface. We have carried out atomic-scale computations of optimal diffusion pathways along and across island step edges on the W(110) surface and calculated Ehrlich-Schwoebel (ES) barriers in adatom diffusion along and across such step edges. This aspect of surface adatom diffusion contributes to anisotropic surface atomic fluxes, terrace and step diffusive currents, and has been incorporated into our PFC surface evolution model, which predicts the formation of preferentially aligned nanoridge stripe patterns on the PFC surface. We establish that these anisotropic diffusive currents accelerate nanotendril growth on the PFC surface and the onset of surface nanostructure pattern formation. We also explore systematically the dependence of the PFC surface morphological response on the surface temperature and He ion incident flux, characterize in detail the resulting surface topographies and growth kinetics, and compare the predicted surface morphologies with experimental observations. Our simulation predictions for the emerging surface nanostructure patterns under certain plasma exposure conditions are consistent with experimental findings in the literature.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA (United States); Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States); Univ. of Missouri, Columbia, MO (United States); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR). Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0006661; 4000159698; SC0020292; SC0018421; 4000159718
OSTI ID:
1910288
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1906546; OSTI ID: 1906963; OSTI ID: 1993968
Journal Information:
Nuclear Fusion, Journal Name: Nuclear Fusion Vol. 63 Journal Issue: 2; ISSN 0029-5515
Publisher:
IOP PublishingCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
IAEA
Language:
English

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