Comparison of thermal shock resistance capabilities of the rotary swaged pure tungsten, potassium-doped tungsten, and W-La₂O₃ alloys

Tungsten-based materials are one of the most important candidates for the plasma facing materials (PFMs) of future fusion reactors, and it is necessary to study the properties of tungsten-based materials under the service conditions of fusion devices to ensure the long-term steady-state operation of future fusion reactors. In this paper, different tungsten-based materials made by the same rotary swaging process are selected to simulate the transient thermal loads on the PFMs of a fusion reactor using an electron beam, and thermal load experiments are carried out by changing the power density of a loading pulse and the pulse number. It is found that different tungsten-based materials made by the same process have large differences in thermal shock resistance, and the doped tungsten materials (W-K and W-La₂O₃) are significantly better than the pure tungsten materials with the increase in thermal shock power density and the number of cycles, especially the W-K materials, which have excellent performance.