Retention and release of deuterium implanted in copper coatings on Al-6061

To mitigate the problem of retention and permeation of tritium implanted in Al-6061, the use of copper coatings was investigated. Copper coatings (hav ing weights of 0.03, 0.06 and 0.088 kg/m(2)) deposited on Al-6061 substrate s by the RF Magnetron sputtering method were implanted with deuterium (D) i n an accelerator at 350 K, and the resulting D profiles were monitored usin g negative SIMS and the D(He-3,p)He-4 nuclear reaction. The retention chara cteristics of deuterium were subsequently studied as a function of coating weight, D+ fluence (varied in the 1 - 3 x 10(21) D+/m(2) range) and D+ ion energy (40 and 120 keV). Under identical implantation conditions, deuterium retention in Al-6061 was higher than in Al-6061 coated with 0.088 kg/m(2) Cu. In the various coatings implanted under different conditions, deuterium retention ranged between 1.2% and 5.4% of the implanted amount. The deuter ium retention decreased with increasing coating weight and then leveled off with further increases in the coating weight. The retention increased line arly with implantation fluence, (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.