Deuterium retention and desorption behavior in an advanced reduced-activation alloy

We present the first experimental results of the deuterium retention and desorption behavior in an advanced reduced-activation alloy (ARAA) under development in Korea. For the in-situ measurement of desorbed gases from samples immediately after irradiation, a thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS) system clustered with an inductively coupled plasma ion source has been built. Samples were and were not irradiated with helium ions at energies of 1.4, 3.5, and 5.0 keV and then continuously irradiated with 1.7-keV deuterium ions. TDS measurements were performed in situ immediately after deuterium irradiation and after exposure to air for one week. The amount of desorbed deuterium is the largest for the sample without helium irradiation from the TDS results measured in situ immediately after irradiation. Further, the amount of desorbed deuterium is significantly lowered when the helium energy is increased to 3.5 keV with no significant changes thereafter, indicating that the layer formed by implanted helium at near or deeper than the stopping range for 1.7-keV deuterium ions effectively acts as a barrier against deuterium diffusion into the depth. Because of the strong diffusivity of deuterium into the ambient atmosphere, the amounts of desorbed deuterium are greatly reduced for the samples without helium irradiation and with 1.4-keV helium irradiation after exposure to air for one week. In addition, our deuterium results for the ARAA are also compared with the results for F82H by other authors.