Laser Surface Inspections: Fundamentals And Applications To Monitor Inner Surface Conditions Of Nuclear Fusion Reactor Chambers

The most recent fundamental research results to investigate surface erosions of nuclear fusion candidate chamber materials are described in short. We used a commercial surface profiler with a red semiconductor laser. Various material surfaces ablated and eroded by a rather short pulse electron beam and a short pulse ArF laser light were measured with this surface profiler and the associated three-dimensional analysis software. Threshold input levels for various sample surface erosions with electron and laser beams were clearly decided for the first time with our new method in this article. After the above fundamental results were gathered, the methods to inspect inner surface conditions of nuclear fusion reactor chambers were newly proposed with various kinds of laser displacement sensors. The first one is the erosion monitor with the above profiler, and the second one is the laser induced ultrasonic wave detection method to inspect deeper surface layers than the first one.