Saefan Ashrakat, Liu Xingyu, Lang Eric, Higgins Levko, Wang Yongqiang, El-Atwani Osman, Allain Jean Paul, Wang Xing
Ken and Mary Alice Lindquist Department of Nuclear Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
Sci Rep. 2023 Aug 16;13(1):13352. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-40421-0.
The formation of helium bubbles and subsequent property degradation poses a significant challenge to tungsten as a plasma-facing material in future long-pulse plasma-burning fusion reactors. In this study, we investigated helium bubble formation in dispersion-strengthened tungsten doped with transition metal carbides, including TaC, ZrC, and TiC. Of the three dispersoids, TaC exhibited the highest resistance to helium bubble formation, possibly due to the low vacancy mobility in the Group VB metal carbide and oxide phases. Under identical irradiation conditions, large helium bubbles formed at grain boundaries in tungsten, while no bubbles were observed at the interfaces between the carbide dispersoid and tungsten matrix. Moreover, our results showed the interfaces could suppress helium bubble formation in the nearby tungsten matrix, suggesting that the interfaces are more effective in trapping helium as tiny clusters. Our research provided new insights into optimizing the microstructure of dispersion-strengthened tungsten alloys to enhance their performance.
在未来长脉冲等离子体燃烧聚变反应堆中，氦气泡的形成以及随后的性能退化对作为面向等离子体材料的钨构成了重大挑战。在本研究中，我们研究了掺杂过渡金属碳化物（包括TaC、ZrC和TiC）的弥散强化钨中氦气泡的形成。在这三种弥散体中，TaC对氦气泡形成的抗性最高，这可能是由于VB族金属碳化物和氧化物相中低的空位迁移率所致。在相同的辐照条件下，钨的晶界处形成了大的氦气泡，而在碳化物弥散体与钨基体的界面处未观察到气泡。此外，我们的结果表明，这些界面可以抑制附近钨基体中氦气泡的形成，这表明这些界面在将氦捕获为微小团簇方面更有效。我们的研究为优化弥散强化钨合金的微观结构以提高其性能提供了新的见解。
