Mass spectra and incident energy resolved spectra after collisions of hydrocarbon ions with fusion-plasma tungsten thin films

Abstract

We have performed surface-induced dissociation studies of small deuterated hydrocarbon cations i.e. CD_x+ with x=2-4, colliding with two types of tungsten-coated surfaces, in the incident energy range between E_in = 0 eV approximately, up to E_in = 100 eV. A 34 nm thick W layer deposited on stainless steel using the Thermionic Vacuum Arc (TVA) method and a small sample of a tile cut from ASDEX-Upgrade tiles, consisting of PlasmaSprayed (PS) tungsten on carbon, are exposed to ion flux in these experiments. A double-focussing reverse geometry BE mass spectrometer, is used under ultra high vacuum conditions. Mass spectra of secondary charged particles are recorded via time-of-flight mass analyser. For comparison, we have performed equivalent study on polished stainless steel under experimental status explained in Section 2 below. At very low energies i.e. below 10 eV, only surface reflected projectiles are seen, whereas most of them are neutralized by surface micro charges. We observed that the fragmentation pattern of the small molecular ions at a given energy is strongly dependent on the surface. The roughness of both of the said thin films and their reflectivity for the projectile ion beam is studied by analysis of the ion yields of the reaction products