Modeling of hydrogen plasma-material interactions with reactive metals

Plasma-material interactions are critical to fusion device performance. Recycling through prompt processes such as reflection and ion-induced desorption and through slow processes such as diffusion and outgassing has a significant effect on the plasma, and controlling recycling is necessary for high performance. Advanced FRC devices developed by TAE technologies use reactive metals for controlling hydrogen recycling. This work presents the results of initial modeling efforts at TAE to understand the plasma-wall interface when the wall is coated with reactive metals, including binary collision approximation modeling with RustBCA[1] using attractive-repulsive potentials and diffusion and recombination models of outgassing.

[1] Drobny et al., (2021). RustBCA: A High-Performance Binary-Collision-Approximation Code for Ion-Material Interactions. Journal of Open Source Software, 6(64), 3298, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.03298