The Influence of Rhenium Content on Helium Desorption Behavior in Tungsten–Rhenium Alloy

Abstract

To investigate the influence of different rhenium contents on the helium desorption behavior in tungsten–rhenium alloys, pure tungsten and tungsten–rhenium alloys were irradiated with helium under the same conditions. All irradiated samples were characterized using TDS and DBS techniques. The results indicate that the addition of rhenium can reduce the total helium desorption quantity in tungsten–rhenium alloys and slightly accelerate the reduction in the concentration of vacancy-type defects accompanying helium dissociation. The desorption activation energy of helium is approximately 2 eV at the low-temperature peak (~785 K) and about 4 eV at the high-temperature peak (~1475 K). An increase in rhenium content causes the desorption peak to shift towards higher temperatures (>1473 K), which is attributed to the formation of the stable complex structures between rhenium and vacancies. Besides, the migration of He-vacancy complexes towards traps and dynamic annealing processes both lead to the recovery of vacancy-type defects, resulting in a decrease in the positron annihilation S parameters.

Keywords

• W-Re alloy
• positron annihilation spectroscopy
• thermal desorption spectroscopy
• He-vacancy complexes
• rhenium suppression effect