Tungsten fiber-reinforced tungsten composites and their thermal stability

Tungsten will be used as armor material for plasma-facing components in future fusion reactors, but its propensity to embrittlement by microstructural restoration at high temperatures poses a challenge for its use. Tungsten fiber-reinforced tungsten composites (W/W) with drawn tungsten wires embedded in a polycrystalline tungsten matrix remedy the inherent brittleness of tungsten and achieve pseudo-ductile behavior via extrinsic toughening mechanisms. As plasma-facing materials experience high heat fluxes during operation, their thermal stability is important. In W/W composites, the restoration processes at high temperatures differ significantly between wires and matrix: initially recrystallization dominates in the wires, as they were plastically deformed during wire drawing, whereas abnormal grain growth occurs in the matrix. Growing grains may obstruct the interface between wire and matrix and deteriorate the otherwise improved fracture properties of W/W. An yttria interlayer is introduced to separate wire from matrix, to hinder an interplay between the restoration processes and to impede grains from the wire from growing into the matrix and vice versa. Cylindrical model systems containing a single wire in a chemically vapor-deposited matrix are investigated without any interlayer and with an yttria interlayer of either 1 μm or 3 μm thickness. Isothermal annealing at 1450 °C for different times up to 2 weeks, followed by microstructural characterization by means of EBSD are carried out to characterize the microstructural evolution. The role of the interlayer on the microstructural evolution is elucidated to establish if decoupling of the restoration processes is actually achieved.