Establishing an advanced bonding technique for tungsten and copper alloys

Research Results and Their Significance

Professor Masayuki Tokitani and his research group at the National Institute for Fusion Science have developed a new technique for direct tough bonding between tungsten and copper alloys by making the bonding layer as a cushion even without using an intermediate material. Using this bonding technique, they succeeded in the fabrication of a small-scale divertor mock-up with excellent heat removal capability even under the reactor relevant condition (~15 MW/m2).

The divertor components must endure the extreme high-heat flux. Further, during the heat treatment phase for brazing, since the entire component is heated up to approximately 900 degrees C, it is then cooled to the room temperature. Therefore, the thermal stress is induced in the bonding interface of the armor and heat sink material. Such thermal stress should be reduced as much as possible. This time, in order to meet these requirements simultaneously, the research group used the filler material BNi-6 (Ni-11%P) and the oxide dispersion strengthened copper alloy (ODS-Cu), GlidCop® (Cu-0.3wt%Al2O3) and fulfilled the optimal bonding condition.

More specifically, Professor Tokitani's group set the thickness of the brazing material at 38 ?m, and the heat treatment temperature and the duration at 960 degrees C and 10 minutes, respectively, for that time when the brazing is undertaken. Then, in cooling from 960 degrees C to 100 degrees C they used the extremely slow natural cooling. In cooling from 100 degrees C to room temperature they used nitrogen gas cooling. After the brazing, the three-point bending test was carried out for evaluating the bonding strength. Surprisingly, the bonding layer has a ductile property. The yield strength reached to around 200 MPa. Since yield strengths of both tungsten and GlidCop® are over 300 MPa even after the brazing heat treatment, the deformation region must be focused on the brazing layer itself. When the strain is 0.2%, at a glance it may not be thought to be a particularly significant plastic deformation. However, since the actual plastic deformable region is very thin, e.g., a few tens of micrometers, the absolute local strain should be significantly greater than 0.2%. This is a surprising result.

This means that the bonding layer obtains toughness, and that the induced thermal stress during brazing heat treatment can be absorbed by the brazing layer. Further, such a relaxation capability of the applied stress has great merit from the viewpoint of the reliability of the divertor components even when they accept the unexpected thermal stress during the reactor operation. Incidentally, the dashed line in green is an example of a failed brazing in which different copper alloy and brazing materials are used. In the case of the failed brazing, the bonding layer was fractured with a brittle feature at 1/4 of the stress as compared with the advanced bonding technique of this study. Further, the small-scale divertor mock-up of the W/BNi-6/GlidCop® was then successfully fabricated by the advanced brazing technique. The heat loading test under the reactor relevant condition to the mock-up was carried out by using the electron beam device ACT2 at NIFS. The temperature of 650 degrees C was sufficiently lower than that of the melting point of the BNi-6 (875 degrees C) and recrystallization temperature of tungsten (~1500 degrees C). The reason why such an excellent heat removal capability was obtained is that since the direct bonding without any intermediate material was adopted, a minimum heat transfer resistance from the armor to the heat sink could be maintained.

The advanced brazing technique of this study will contribute not only to constructing the superior divertor but also to greatly reducing the construction cost of the entire divertor structure in the future fusion reactor. In the future work, using this method, we will produce a large-scale divertor component whose structure will be similar to the divertor that will be utilized in the nuclear fusion reactor. We will aim at a divertor design and construction that will make long-range operation and safe usage possible.

This research result was presented at the 26th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference held in Kyoto, Japan, October 17-22, 2016.