LAUSR

Bubbles seriously degrade the mechanical properties of tungsten and thus threaten the safety of nuclear fusion devices, however, the underlying atomic mechanism of bubble growth from clustered hydrogen and helium atoms is still mysterious. In this work, first-principles calculations are therefore carried out to assess the stability of tungsten atoms around both hydrogen and helium clusters. We find that the closest vacancy-formation energies of interstitial hydrogen and helium clusters are substantially decreased. The first-nearest and second-nearest vacancy-formation energies close to vacancy–hydrogen clusters decrease in a step-like way to ~0, while those close to vacancy–helium clusters are reduced almost linearly to ~−5.46 eV when atom number reaches 10. The vacancy-formation energies closest to helium clusters are more significantly reduced than those nearest to hydrogen clusters, whatever the clusters are embedded at interstitial sites or vacancies. The reduction of vacancy-formation energies results in instability and thus emission of tungsten atoms close to interstitial helium and vacancy–helium clusters, which illustrates the experimental results, that the tungsten atoms can be emitted from the vicinity of vacancy–helium clusters. In addition, the emission of unstable tungsten atoms close to hydrogen clusters may become possible once they are disturbed by the environment. The emission of tungsten atoms facilitates the growth and evolution of hydrogen and helium clusters and ultimately the bubble formation. The results also explain the bubble formation even if no displacement damage is produced in tungsten exposed to low-energy hydrogen and helium plasma.