Observations of skeletal microstructures in various types of dust deposit in tokamak T-10

An analysis of electron transmission and scanning micrographs of various types of dust deposit in tokamak T-10 was carried out for (a) analyzing the origin of non-trivial (e.g. cauliflower-like) structures in dust deposits in tokamaks, and (b) verifying the former hypothesis for the possibility of self-assembling, during electric breakdown, of skeletal macro structures from wildly formed carbon nano tubes. The results show (i) the presence of tubular structures in the range of diameters D ∼ 5 nm - 10 μm; (ii) the trend of assembling bigger tubules from smaller ones (i.e., the self-similarity); (iii) the ability of nano tubular structures to build up the skeletons of various topology, including the tubules, cartwheels, dendrites; (iv) the presence of an amorphous (mostly, hydrocarbon) component which may hide the internal skeleton either fully (to give a solitary dust particle, e.g. of submicron size) or partly (to give an agglomerate of visually separate particles); (v) the similarity of tubules and cartwheels in the dust deposits, in the range D < 10 μm, and in the (high temporal resolution) images of plasma in tokamaks, Z-pinches and plasma focus, D ∼ 5 nm - 100 μ - 10 cm. (author)