Effects of surface orientation on lifetime of near-surface nanoscale He bubble in tungsten

In multiscale modeling of the morphological evolution of plasma facing materials in nuclear fusion reactors, the knowledge of the timescales of the involved physical processes is important. In the present study, a new method based on molecular dynamics simulations was developed to extract the lifetime of helium bubbles near tungsten surfaces. It was found that the lifetime of a helium bubble can be described by the Arrhenius equation. However, the lifetime of a helium bubble depends on the thickness of tungsten film above the helium bubble in the substrate and the bubble size. The influence of surface orientations on the lifetime of helium bubbles was also observed, and the performance of helium bubbles on the (111) surface is very different from on the (001) and (011) surfaces. The role of the helium bubble lifetime in other simulation techniques, such as in kinetic Monte Carlo methods and rate theory, is discussed. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.