Effects of a nitrogen seeded plasma on nanostructured tungsten films having fusion-relevant features

Abstract Nitrogen (N) seeding is routinely applied in tokamaks with tungsten (W) walls to control the power exhaust toward the divertor. Open questions, concerning the interaction of N with W, are the influence of ion energy and W temperature on retention of implanted N and the erosion by deuterium (D) of the tungsten nitride being formed. Moreover, the extremely high particle fluxes in ITER and DEMO will erode the W tiles and the sputtered atoms will re-deposit forming W-based layers with a different behaviour toward the interaction with N seeded D plasmas. In this work, W films with different morphology and structure were exposed to the N seeded D plasma of the linear device GyM, in order to address all these issues. The experiments were performed at the fixed N 2 /D 2 partial pressure ratio of ∼ 4% keeping the total pressure constant at 5.3 × 1 0 − 4 mbar. The exposure conditions were: (i) sample temperature of ∼ 850 K, (ii) particle fluxes of 2 − 2 . 2 × 1 0 20 ions ⋅ m − 2 ⋅ s−1 and (iii) particle energies up to ∼ 320 eV. W columnar films (c-W) with properties close to those of virgin W coatings deposited on the tiles of JET Iter-Like Wall and ASDEX Upgrade and W amorphous films (a-W) resembling nanostructured W-based deposits found in present-day tokamaks and expected in ITER and DEMO, were considered. W columnar and amorphous coatings were produced by means of magnetron sputtering and pulsed laser deposition, respectively. The specimens were characterised by profilometry, X-ray depth-profiling photoelectron spectroscopy, optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The main evidence is that the behaviour of the W films upon D+N plasma exposure in GyM strictly depends on their morphology and nanostructure. For all the films, a surface N-enriched layer, which is thermally stable and does not decompose at least up to ∼ 850 K, is observed. Moreover, blisters are not present on the surface of the samples. The c-W coatings erode faster than the a-W ones and have a higher nitrogen retention and diffusivity. The mechanisms behind these results are here discussed together with their possible implications from the point of view of the topic of plasma-wall interaction in tokamaks.