Quantifying residual stress in Helium implanted surfaces and its implication for blistering

TL;DR

This study quantifies residual stress and swelling in Helium-implanted vanadium surfaces, revealing that blistering is driven mainly by gas pressure buildup causing bulging, with implications for nuclear material durability.

Contribution

It provides new measurements of surface stress and swelling in Helium-implanted vanadium, linking residual stress to blistering mechanisms in nuclear materials.

Findings

Swelling values align with literature.

Surface stress approaches yield strength at blistering doses.

Blister formation driven mainly by gas pressure buildup.

Abstract

Helium implantation in surfaces is of interest for plasma facing materials and other nuclear applications. Vanadium as both a representative bcc material and a material relevant for fusion applications is implanted using a Helium ion beam microscope, and the resulting swelling and nanomechanical properties are quantified. These values are put in correlation to data obtained from micro residual stress measurements using a focused ion beam based ring-core technique. We found that the swelling measured is similar to literature values. Further we are able to measure the surface stress caused by the implantation and find it approaches the yield strength of the material at blistering doses. The simple calculations performed in the present work, along with several geometrical considerations deduced from experimental results confirm the driving force for blister formation comes from bulging resulting mainly from gas pressure buildup, rather than solely stress induced buckling.