Analysis of boronized wall in LHD

Boronization has been carried out in some experimental fusion devices as one of wall conditioning Methods. The well-known merits of the boronization are as follows: 1) coated-boron on the first wall has strong gettering function for oxygen impurities and oxygen has been kept into boron films as a boron-oxide and 2) boron film covers first wall with apparently low Z materials facing the plasma. However, an operation scenario of boronization for next generation devices such as ITER is not optimized. In this paper, we discuss an optimized method of coated film uniformity in a wide area and a lifetime of boron film as an oxygen getter using experimental data in the large helical device (LHD). In LHD, boronization by glow discharges has been carried out a few times during each experimental campaign. Helium-diborane mixtured gas is used and plasma facing components (PFM) are stainless steel (SS) for the first wall and carbon for the divertor plates kept in the room temperature. Material probes made of SS316 and Si were installed in the vacuum vessel and exposed during the experimental campaign. Depth profiles of their impurities were analyzed using the X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and the Auger electron spectroscopy (AES). Two types of gettering process by boron film have been investigated. One is the process during boronization and the other is that after boronization. Concerning a lifetime of boron film, the distribution of oxygen near the top surface region (0 to 20 nm) indicates a process of oxygen gettering, it shows a contribution after boronization. In this paper, these kinds of process using material probes are shown. (authors)