Materials experience with tokamak plasmas

The primary effects of using various wall and limiter materials have been in the amount and kind of impurities they introduce into the plasma. The materials employed to date include gold, stainless steel, inconel, glass, alumina, and titanium for first walls and carbon, stainless steel, inconel, alumina, silicon carbide, boron carbide, molybdenum, tantalum, titanium, and tungsten for limiters and divertors. Limiter surfaces bear the brunt of the plasma bombardment and so typically introduce impurities far out of proportion to their relative size. The ratio of the bombarded limiter area to that of the first wall is of order 1 to 103