Investigations on cold spray tungsten/tantalum coatings for plasma facing applications

Cold gas spraying for the production of thick tungsten (W) coatings has been investigated for use at plasma facing components in fusion devices. Since the brittle nature of W strongly impedes its deposition, a systematic study was performed using mixtures of tungsten and tantalum (Ta) powders. Whereas the use of 100% W powder was not successful yet, 2 mm thick coatings on steel were produced by using a W/Ta powder mixture with 90 vol% W, yielding a W content in the coating of 70 vol%. The coatings show negligible porosity and very good adhesion to the substrate. High heat flux experiments on samples with the size 80 × 80 mm² were performed in order to investigate the behaviour under low (≤4 MW/m²) steady state loads and high power (∼40 MW/m²) transients. During the pulses with low power density, being typical for applications at the main chamber first wall, no defects were observed and a thermal conductivity close to that of the bulk materials was found. During the high power transients lasting for 200 ms cracks parallel to the surface appeared inside the coating.