The chemical erosion of carbon in interaction with a hydrogen plasma has been studied in detail in ion beam experiments, and erosion yield values are available as a function of ion energy and surface temperature. However, the conditions in the ITER divertor cannot be simulated by ion beam experiments, especially as far as ion flux is concerned.Therefore, a joint attempt was made through the EU Task Force on plasma–wall interaction and the international tokamak physics activity involving seven different fusion devices and plasma simulators to clarify the flux dependence. For each data point the local plasma conditions were normalized to an impact energy of 30 eV, care was taken to select data for a surface temperature close to the maximum yield or room temperature and the calibration of the diagnostic was performed in situ. Through this procedure the previous large scatter was significantly reduced, revealing a clear trend for a decreasing yield with increasing ion flux, Φ. After the attribution of an error to each data point a fit using Bayesian probability analysis was performed, yielding a decrease in the erosion yield with Φ−0.54 at high ion fluxes.
Particle flux and temperature dependence of carbon impurity production from an inertially-cooled limiter in Tore Supra