UKAEA-CCFE-PR(25)397
Atom Probe Tomography investigation of lithium uptake from liquid Pb- 17Li by nanocrystalline/amorphous Al2O3 coatings
In this work, atom probe tomography has been applied to study lithium-induced corrosion of Pulsed-Laser Deposition grown Al2O3, which is a candidate coating material for the breeder blankets of nuclear fusion reactors. Samples were immersed in static Pb-17Li for 7000h with samples extracted from the regions near the ceramic-substrate interface to determine the extent of Li penetration. Non-stoichiometric, Li-induced clustering is reported for the first
time in Al2O3. The nature and composition of the clusters were characterized with nanometre resolution. Based on these results, a cluster formation mechanism is proposed.