A Review of Recent Studies on Particle Recycling From Liquid Metals With/Without Convection Under Plasma Bombardment

From the recent experiments on liquid metal plasma-facing components, convection appears to play an important role in maintaining reduced recycling conditions. Either it is natural or forced convection, the transport of the implanted particle is accelerated in the depth direction whereby the surface saturation would be delayed or avoided. Reviewed in this paper are some of the recent studies on particle recycling from liquid metals under plasma bombardment with the emphasis on liquid convection effects. Natural convection has been observed to enhance deuterium plasma-driven permeation. In addition, the effects of J × B forced convection on particle recycling have been extensively studied under steady-state hydrogen, deuterium, helium, and argon plasma bombardment. Also, preliminary fluid dynamics analysis has been conducted to interpret these experimental observations.