Deuterium retention of liquid Sn and SnLi in a CPS target under plasma exposure at high temperatures

In the present work, the results of the exposure of in laboratory manufactured SnLi and Sn CPS targets to Deuterium plasmas with a flux of 4 × 1019 D m−2s for different fluences and temperatures are presented. For both SnLi and Sn CPS targets a saturation of the deuterium retention is observed for fluences over 1.2 × 1022 D m−2 in liquid state, while no saturation is observed up to 1.9 × 1023 D m−2 for the solid state. In both cases a decreasing Deuterium retention with increasing temperature is observed and a 100 times higher retention for SnLi than for Sn is obtained. The SnLi CPS target presents a preferential evaporation of Li, showing an almost complete depletion of the Li content after 100 min heating at 770 °C. Bubble formation and bursting was also visually observed and recorded during plasma exposure for the case of the SnLi CPS target but not in the case of the Sn CPS target for the same conditions. This behaviour for Sn is different from what has been observed in previous works but the system geometry and surface type, as well as the difference in the flux to the target, could explain this difference. The results stress the relevance of the design of the containing system in the D retention and Sn behaviour under D exposure.