Sputtering Erosion in Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactors

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Abstract
Functions that describe the empirically and theoretically determined behavior of sputtering coefficients are devised and used to calculate erosion rates and total erosion of surfaces bombarded by ion beams of specific intensity. Presented are analytic expressions that describe the effects of ion energy and angle of incidence, computational procedures, and analytically and numerically obtained results. Analytic results express the total amount of material eroded per microexplosion in terms of fuel pellet mass, energy yield, and a representative atomic number. Numerically calculated erosions of niobium, carbon, and iron surfaces bombarded by alpha, triton, deuteron, and heavy metal ions indicate that for fuel pellets with heavy metal shells, sputtering erosion should be carefully considered and properly designed for.