Development of tungsten coated first wall and high heat flux components for application in ASDEX Upgrade

In the tokamak experiment ASDEX Upgrade, the investigation of tungsten as a first wall material is an ongoing research project. In a step-by-step strategy, the tungsten covered surface area is increased from campaign to campaign. For this purpose an industrial-scale method for coating graphite with micrometer tungsten films had to be identified. Test coatings deposited by magnetron sputtering and by plasma-arc deposition were compared. By X-ray analysis it was found that sputter-deposited coatings suffer from high compressive stress (1.7 GPa). This leads to delamination when a film thickness of about 3 pm is exceeded. For are-deposited coatings, a compressive stress value of 0.5 GPa was determined and no delamination occurred up to the maximum film thicknesses investigated, i.e. 10 mum. Upon thermal loading, none of the arc-deposited coatings failed up to the melting condition, while one sputter-coating delaminated. First results on similar investigations employing CFC substrates are presented. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.