Tungsten Sputtering Yields by Light Impurities of Plasma

Abstract—

Calculations of the tungsten sputtering yields (the divertor material in the ITER tokamak) by He, Be, N, and O—impurity atoms in the plasma—were carried out at a collision energy of 0.010–100 keV using the Monte Carlo method. To calculate the trajectory of the incident particle, pair potentials obtained within the framework of density functional theory were used. These potentials were corrected for the parameters of the potential well obtained from spectroscopic measurements. The target consisted of tungsten randomly oriented crystals the size of one lattice constant. Next, the trajectories of the recoil particles were calculated using many-particle potentials calculated using density functional theory. Thermal vibrations of target atoms were taken into account. The vibration amplitude was taken to be 0.05 Å, which corresponded to room temperature. The strong dependence of the results on the shape of the surface potential barrier is shown, and the results are presented for two limiting cases of the surface state: a flat surface, when a planar surface potential barrier is realized, and a surface consisting of cones, when a spherical potential barrier occurs. In the experiment, the surface has some roughness, which depends on the experimental conditions. It is shown that the experimental results lie between the limiting cases we considered. Information was obtained on the average energy of sputtered atoms and angular distributions necessary for calculating the entry of impurities into the tokamak plasma.