Deuterium desorption and retention of Beryllium intermetallic compounds for fusion applications

Abstract Beryllium intermetallic compounds (beryllides) such as Be12Ti and Be12V are the most promising advanced neutron multipliers in demonstration (DEMO) power reactors because of their low swelling and high stability at high temperature. In this work, beryllides pebbles with binary and ternary compositions were successfully fabricated by combining plasma sintering and rotating electrode methods. After 3 keV D2+ ions were implanted to the beryllides pebbles, the deuterium desorption and retention properties were investigated by thermal desorption spectroscopy to investigate hydrogen desorption and retention of these materials for fusion application. The desorption properties and retention of hydrogen isotopes (deuterium) using the newly developed beryllide pebbles indicated that the beryllide pebbles exhibited better deuterium desorption properties, such as lower starting-up temperature, total retention, and activation energy for deuterium desorption than beryllium.