Prototype Diamond-like Carbon (DLC) Stripper Foils for NPAs
description
Transcript of Prototype Diamond-like Carbon (DLC) Stripper Foils for NPAs
Prototype Diamond-like Carbon (DLC) Stripper Foils for NPAs
RF Progress meeting on 10th ITPA TG on Diagnostics, Kurchatov Inst. Moscow, 10.04.2006
Vitaly Liechtenstein
Overview
Introduction The essential features required of a stripper
foil for the NPA, why foil of DLC is well suited? Fabrication of prototype DLC stripper foils for
NPAs Irradiation tests of the foils Summary and outlook
Introduction
As mentioned in the previous talk, very thin diamond-like carbon (DLC) foils are supposed to be used as advanced strippers for NPA diagnostics at the ITER. A stripper foil is obviously essential for a NPA since it determines the most important parameters of the analyzer. The aim of this talk is to briefly present the main results of the recent prototype DLC stripper R&D
The essential features required of a stripper foil for the NPA
Optimum thickness in terms of stripping efficiency, energy straggling and ion transmission through the analyzer
Sufficiently long lifetime under ITER irradiations High mechanical stability to fit ITER environment conditions and maintenance procedure
Why Diamond-like Carbon as a NPA Stripper Material ?
Crystalline Diamond is well known as a best target material owing to its exceptionally high irradiation and mechanical hardness. However, it’s obviously impractical to use diamond as a thin stripper foil for NPA
Developed in Kurchatov Institute deposition technique allows for
fabrication amorphous DLC foils with main physical properties close to those of crystalline diamond. These foils demonstrated the following advantages over ordinary carbon foils in the variety of the comparative tests at different labs:
- much higher mechanical strength optimized stripper foils with minimal energy&angle straggling of transmitted particles can be produced - improved (~ 10 times) ion irradiation lifetimes long –term stable operation in the NPA is expected
These promising results as well as reliable long-term operation of DLC strippers in NPAs at TFTR , JET and JT-60 in different periods have governed the proper choice of DLC foils to be used in the NPAs at ITER
Strong and homogenous DLC foils in the thickness range of 2 –200nm with the typical size of around 10mm can be produced by this
techniqueSchematic and view of the set-up for sputter DLC
films deposition
Very flat and smooth supporting grid is
necessary for the stable performance of a thin stripper foil. To fulfill this requirement, the specific heat treatment technique for perfect stretching of grids over the foil holdershas been developed
*Patented
PROTOTYPE DLC STRIPPER FOIL FOR NPAs *
5 nm thick DLC foil supported by the copper grid of 50 microns pitch size
Irradiation tests of the Prototype DLC Stripper foils
BEFORE THE NEUTRON-TEST BEFORE THE D0-TEST
UNDER THE He+-TEST
Results of the Prototype Stripper Foil Irradiation tests
* To be updated soon
Type of the radiation
Test facility Exposure(fluence)
Neutrons, ~ 0.1 MeV
IR-8, Kurchatov 10^16 cm-2
He+, 3 MeV MPIK, Heidelberg 8x 10^18 cm-2
D0, 1 kev ACL, Ioffe 4x 10^16 cm-2 *
Changes in morphology and thickness of the irradiated foils were verified during the tests
Summary
DLC stripper foils have been developed which meet the present requirements of both LENPA and HENPA The samples of the prototype stripper foils passed the irradiation tests relevant to the ITER plasma
conditions Our next efforts of this year will be aimed at the
development of prototype stripper foil for LENPA with enlarged to 20mm effective diameter. Also, we plan to investigate in more detail mechanical and thermal stability of prototype DLC stripper foils intended for NPA s
Other coauthors of this workT.M. Ivkova , E.D. Olsahanski, K.Ju. Vukolov (Kurchatov) V.A. Afanasiev, M.P. Petrov (Ioffe)
Acknowledgement Collaboration with the teams of the Acceleration Facilities of MPIK, Heidelberg, and VERA-Lab, Vienna on the characterization and comparative tests of the samples of DLC foils is mostly appreciated