Hydrogen isotopes retention in divertor tiles of DIII-D tokamak

The absolute concentration of hydrogen isotopes in graphite divertor tiles coated with boron carbide after the exposure in DIII-D during 16 operational weeks of the 1993 campaign was obtained using the 14 MeV neutron-induced recoil detection (NERD) method. It is shown that the absolute concentration of H in tile's surface layers correlates with thickness of the deposited layers. The graphite tile without boron carbide coating had a H concentration similar to that of the tile with the thickest deposited layer. Deuterium and tritium were not detected in any of the investigated tiles. The proposed method can be used for the determination of the thickness of coatings without sample destruction. Thus, the thickness of boron carbide coatings on the tiles obtained with this method varied from 80 to 115 μm, which corresponded well to electron microscope data. (orig.)