ORIGINAL RESEARCH Microstructures, Mechanical Properties and Deuterium Blistering Behavior of Chemically Prepared W–TiC Alloys Shaoting Lang 1 • Qingzhi Yan 1 • Ningbo Sun 1 • Xiaoxin Zhang 1 • Changchun Ge 1 Published online: 10 March 2017 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017 Abstract The sintered W–(0, 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5) wt% TiC alloys and rolled W–0.1 wt% TiC alloys with different rolling reduction rates (65 and 83%) were fabricated using a wet-chemical method. The samples were irradiated with 367 shots of deuterium plasma in the Material and Plasma Evaluation System of the EAST tokamak for a total plasma exposure time of *2000 s to evaluate their surface blis- tering behaviors. The microstructure, mechanical proper- ties and surface blistering behavior of the samples after exposure were investigated. It was found that the average grain size of the sintered W–(0–0.5)TiC alloys decreased, and their relative density, microhardness and bending strength increased with the increase in the TiC content. The sintered W–0.5TiC alloy exhibited the smallest average grain size of 0.8 lm and the highest bending strength of 1163.6 MPa. Post-irradiation examinations showed that all of the sintered samples suffered surface blistering, but as the TiC content of the alloy was increased, the size of the blisters decreased. The sintered pure tungsten (PW) exhibited serious, ruptured blisters with sizes of *1 to 25 lm; while the sintered W–0.5TiC alloy exhibited the best resistance to the deuterium plasma as evidenced by the small size of the blisters of \ 1–2 lm. In the case of the rolled samples, stream-like blisters and spot-like blisters were observed on the surfaces of the W–0.1 wt% TiC alloys with rolling reduction rates of 65 and 83%, respec- tively. The W–0.1 wt% TiC alloy with a higher rolling reduction rate exhibited a lower density of blisters and a lower degree of damage, which demonstrated that higher rolling reduction rate improved the deuterium plasma resistance of the rolled W–TiC alloys. Keywords W–TiC alloy Á Wet-chemical method Á Deuterium plasma Á Blistering behavior Introduction Tungsten (W) has been selected as the main candidate material for plasma-facing components (PFCs) of future fusion reactors like ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) and DEMO (DEMOnstration Power Plant) due to its high melting point, high thermal conduc- tivity, low sputtering yield, and low tritium inventory [1–5]. However, pure tungsten (PW) exhibits several drawbacks such as low recrystallization temperature, high ductile-to-brittle transition temperature (DBTT) and irra- diation brittleness [6–8]. Many researchers have demon- strated that these issues can be effectively alleviated by strengthening the tungsten matrix with TiC particles [9–14]. The wet-chemical method has been shown to be a promising approach for preparation of W–TiC alloys that have excellent thermal and mechanical properties [14–16]. As is well known, PFCs have to be able to withstand the complex environment of large power densities and intense D (deuterium)/T (Tritium)/He (Helium) particle fluxes in the future fusion reactors [17]. Extreme surface modifica- tion such as blistering can occur on the surface of tungsten when exposed to D ion/plasma bombardment [17–24]. The blistering behavior of tungsten can be an important issue for the application of tungsten materials as PFCs. Various grades of tungsten materials such as rolled, swaged, recrystallized and stress-relieved pure tungsten materials & Qingzhi Yan qzyan@ustb.edu.cn 1 Institute of Nuclear Materials, University of Science and Technology Beijing, 30 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100083, China 123 J Fusion Energ (2017) 36:71–79 DOI 10.1007/s10894-017-0124-3