Beryllium-copper diffusion bonding for an ITER first wall application

Several different joint assemblies were evaluated in support of a manufacturing technology for diffusion bonding a beryllium armor tile to a copper alloy heat sink for fusion reactor applications. Because beryllium reacts with all but a few elements to form intermetallic compounds, this study considered several different surface treatments as a means of both inhibiting these reactions and promoting a good diffusion bond between the two substrates. All diffusion bonded assemblies used aluminum or an aluminum-beryllium composite (AlBeMet-150) as the interfacial material in contact with beryllium. In most cases, explosive bonding was utilized as a technique for joining the copper alloy heat sink to an aluminum or AlBeMet-150 substrate, which was subsequently diffusion bonded to an aluminum coated beryllium tile. In this approach, a 250 μm thick titanium foil is used as a diffusion barrier between the copper and aluminum to prevent the formation of Cu-Al intermetallic phases. In all cases, a hot isostatic pressing (HIP) furnace was used in conjunction with canned assemblies in order to minimize oxidation and apply sufficient pressure on the assembly for excellent metal-to-metal contact and subsequent bonding. Several different processing schedules were evaluated during the course of this study; bonded assemblies were produced with up to 100% joint efficiency. At this writing, a beryllium-copper divertor mock-up has survived 1000 thermal cycles at 10 MW/m² without damage during testing at the electron beam test system (EBTS) facility at Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico