Sep 16 – 18, 2024
Granada
Europe/Madrid timezone

Challenges and opportunities for the thermal interface selection and diffusion bonding in the STS target segment

Sep 17, 2024, 4:10 PM
25m
Granada

Granada

Speaker

Justin Mach (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

Description

The target assembly for the Second Target Station (STS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is working towards final design approval in late 2025, and R&D continues to focus on the manufacturing of the target segments. The novel design of the target segment and unique combination of materials has driven the process development towards solid state bonding techniques (vacuum hot pressing (VHP) and hot isostatic pressing (HIP)). The mismatch in thermal expansion between the tungsten core and Inconel shroud, combined with the wedge-shaped geometry, create challenges for material interface bonding. A copper thermal interface layer creates a robust bond with both tungsten and Inconel, but copper has a low irradiation swelling temperature range. The lower bound of this range (estimated from literature) is close to the upper bound of the predicted operating temperature range of the copper in the target segment. Therefore, alternative thermal interface layers are also being investigated. The preliminary bonding results will be presented along with the manufacturing development results for the tungsten-copper-Inconel design.

abstract Talk

Primary author

Justin Mach (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

Co-authors

Aaron Jacques (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) Joel Montross (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) Joseph Tipton (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) Thomas Muth (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) Yong Joong Lee (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

Presentation materials