Preliminary characterization of interlayer for Be/Cu sintered compacts

At present, beryllium is under consideration as a main candidate material for plasma facing components of ITER, because of its many advantages such as low Z, high thermal conductivity, low tritium retention, low activation and so on. Among the different divertor design options, the duplex structure where the beryllium armor is bonded with heat sink structural materials (DS-copper, Cu-Cr-Zr and so on) is under consideration. And plasma facing components will be exposed to high heat load and high neutron flux generated by the plasma. Therefore, it is necessary to develop the reliable bonding technologies between beryllium and heat sink structural materials in order to fabricate plasma facing components which can resist those. Then, we started the bonding technology development of beryllium and copper alloy with FGM (functional gradient material) in order to reduce thermal stress due to the difference of thermal expansion between beryllium and copper alloy. As the interlayers for FGM, eleven kinds of sintered compacts in which the mixing ratio of beryllium powder and oxygen free copper powder is different, were fabricated by the hot press/HIP method. The dimension of each compact is 8mm in diameter, 2mm in thickness. Then, thermal diffusivity and specific heat of these compacts were measured by laser flash method, and thermal conductivity was calculated from those values. From metalographical observation, it became clear that the sintered compacts of mixture of beryllium powder and copper powder contain residual beryllium, copper and two kinds of intermetallic compounds, Be2Cu(δ) and BeCu(γ). From the results of thermal characterization, thermal diffusivity of interlayers increased with increase of copper containing ratio. And, specific heat gradually decreased with increase of copper containing ratio