Laboratory and computational studies on radiation damage thresholds in tungsten and boron nitride for first wall applications in IFE reactors

The extreme conditions inside prospective Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) reactors place strict demands on the materials used for plasma-facing components, particularly the first wall. These surfaces are subjected to intense fluxes of energetic photons, ions, neutrons, and debris from the fusion plasma – delivered in short pulses and at high repetition rates – making the choice of material, and a thorough understanding of its radiation response, critical to reactor lifetime and performance. Testing candidate materials under realistic conditions remains challenging, especially due to the non-ideal surfaces typical of practical samples. These may be uneven by design (e.g., foams, sintered nano-powders, or nano-/micro-structured arrays) or due to manufacturing and cost constraints. In this work, we present a novel method for assessing radiation damage thresholds by measuring ion emission from surfaces exposed to short-wavelength laser irradiation. Unlike conventional techniques that rely on detecting subtle morphological changes after irradiation, our approach remains effective even for rough or structured surfaces, making it well-suited for real-world materials.