Analysis of self-regenerating coatings for pulsed-mode fusion plasma operation

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Abstract
One promising approach to the fusion plasma impurity and material erosion associated with surfaces subject to high heat/particle fluxes has been the development of strongly segregating alloy systems capable of producing self-sustaining low-Z coatings. Previous plasma-material analyses of self-regenerating alkali-metal-bearing alloys such as Cu–Li and Al–Li and proposed ternary refractory composites have focused on the steady-state regime of advanced engineering tokamak designs without addressing adequately the pulsed-mode operation of present and planned near-term magnetic confinement devices. The survivability of ‘‘regenerative’’ coatings is coupled directly to thermal and radiation diffusion/segregation defect fluxes induced in the material by the plasma pulse. The lithium solute transport in Al–Li and Cu–Li alloys has been modeled as a function of the operational cycle, plasma-edge temperature, lithium secondary-ion fraction, and alloy composition. The pulse duration has been varied in order to investigate related transient effects upon the buildup and decay of the alkali-metal segregation and diffusion. Pulse widths ranging from 25 ms to 2.5 s have been chosen to simulate magnetic confinement fusion devices.

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