Electron cyclotron resonance hydrogen/helium plasma characterization and simulation of pumping in tokamaks.

摘要

Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) plasmas have been employed to simulate the plasma conditions at the edge of a tokamak in order to investigate hydrogen/helium uptake in thin metal films. The process of microwave power absorption, important to characterizing the ECR plasma source, was investigated by measuring the electron density and temperature with a Langmuir probe and optical spectroscopy as a function of the magnetic field gradient and incident microwave power. A novel diagnostic, carbon resistance probe, provided a direct measure of the ion energy and fluence while measurements from a Langmuir probe were used for comparison. The Langmuir probe gave a plasma potential minus floating potential of 30 (plus minus) 5 eV, in good agreement with the carbon resistance probe result of ion energy (le) 40 eV. The measured ion energy was consistent with the ion energy predicted from a model based upon divergent magnetic field extraction. Also, based upon physical sputtering of the carbon, the hydrogen fluence rate was determined to be 1 (times) 10(sup 16)/cm(sup 2)-sec for 50 Watts of incident microwave power. ECR hydrogen/helium plasmas were used to study preferential pumping of helium in candidate materials for tokamak pump-limiters: nickel, vanadium, aluminum, and nickel/aluminum multi-layers. Nickel and vanadium exhibited similar pumping capacities whereas aluminum showed a reduced capacity due to increased sputtering. A helium retention model based upon ion implantation ranges and sputtering rates agreed with the experimental data. A new multilayer/bilayer pumping concept showed improved pumping above that for single element films.