Effect of grain size on the behavior of hydrogen/helium retention in tungsten: a cluster dynamics modeling

Reducing ion retention in materials is a key factor in the management of tritium inventory, the selection of compatible plasma-facing materials (PFMs), and thus the future development of fusion reactors. In this work, by introducing the cellular sink strength of grain boundaries (GBs) into the cluster dynamics model, the behavior of hydrogen (H) and helium (He) retention in W with different grain sizes is studied under various irradiation conditions systematically. It is found that the H/He retention increases dramatically with decreasing grain size at typical service temperatures, due to the enhancement of H/He capture ratio by GBs. Generally, He retention exists in three forms: He in GBs, in dislocations and in clusters (HemVn, He-n and HenI). Our further study shows that, under the irradiation of low energy and low fluence ions, the contribution of He in clusters is negligible. The total He retention is thus dominated by the competing absorption of GBs and dislocations, that is, changing from the dislocation-based to grain boundary-based retention with decreasing grain size. H retention also presents the same behavior. In view of these grain size-related behaviors of H/He retention in W, it is suggested that coarse-grained crystals should be selected for W-based PFMs in practice.