Damage evaluation of proton irradiated titanium deuteride thin films to be used as neutron production targets

Hydrogen isotopic replacement and microstructure evolution in zirconium deuteride implanted by 150 keV protons*

“…With increasing implantation fluence to 1×10 18 protons/cm 2 , the growing H clusters might eventually reach excessive compressive stress that the pressure disrupted the bubbles to release the H atoms inside, ending with the surface flaking area development. And the growth process of surface damage was similar to the previous results, [15] but in this study, the H atoms were accumulated at the substrate interface due to the intrinsic defects introduced in the preparation process of the target, rather than the defects induced by irradiation. Consequently, the creation of long-living targets requires the selection of suitable alternative substrate materials, such as Nb and Cu.…”

“…[10,11] Furthermore, the D ions implantation can significantly influence the integrity of structural components with the formation of voids, surface swelling, blistering and even crack, exfoliation in the tritium target. [12][13][14][15] Thus, the knowledge of the hydrogen isotopes effect and the microstructural changes of the target, is of essential importance for the assessment of the target lifetime.…”

“…Therefore, the properties of the tritium target were often studied by proton implantation to avoid neutron generation. [11,23,24] In this work, the phenomena of isotopic replacement and microstructure evolution in ZrD x under 150 keV protons implantation were studied instead of ZrT x target irradiated by deuterium ions. The depth profiles of retained H and D in the zirconium deuteride film were obtained by elastically recoil detection analysis (ERDA) combined with time of flight-secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS), which is one of the most useful methods to evaluate the concentration of hydrogen isotopes in materials.…”