Automatic kinetic Monte-Carlo modeling for impurity atom diffusion in grain boundary structure of tungsten material

• Main Authors: Atsushi M. Ito, Shuichi Kato, Arimichi Takayama, Hiroaki Nakamura
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2017-08-01
• Series: Nuclear Materials and Energy
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352179116302198

The diffusion process of hydrogen and helium in plasma-facing material depends on the grain boundary structures. Whether a grain boundary accelerates or limits the diffusion speed of these impurity atoms is not well understood. In the present work, we proposed the automatic modeling of a kinetic Monte-Carlo (KMC) simulation to treat an asymmetric grain boundary structure that corresponds to target samples used in fusion material experiments for retention and permeation. In this method, local minimum energy sites and migration paths for impurity atoms in the grain boundary structure are automatically found using localized molecular dynamics. The grain boundary structure was generated with the Voronoi diagram. Consequently, we demonstrate that the KMC simulation for the diffusion process of impurity atoms in the generated grain boundary structure of tungsten material can be performed. Keywords: Diffusion, Kinetic Monte-Carlo, Molecular dynamics, Tungsten, Hydrogen, Helium