Incident energy dependence of blistering at tungsten irradiated by low energy high flux deuterium plasma beams

Abstract Polycrystalline tungsten samples have been irradiated at near room temperature by high flux (1 × 1022 D/m2/s) deuterium plasma beams with incident ion energies ranging 7–98 eV/D. Surface blistering occurred at all energies as observed by means of scanning electron microscopy. At all energies, the blisters increased in their size and number with fluence within the corresponding low fluence ranges. The size increase tended to saturate at certain fluences within the experimental fluence ranges, which might be attributed to rupturing of blisters. The critical fluence for blistering Φcr was found to increase with decreasing the incident energy. At energies