A quartz-crystal-microbalance technique to investigate ion-induced erosion of fusion relevant surfaces

We describe a highly sensitive quartz-crystal-microbalance technique capable of determining erosion as well as implantation and retention rates for fusion relevant surfaces under ion bombardment. Total sputtering yields obtained with this technique for Ar ion impact on polycrystalline gold and tungsten surfaces are presented. The results compare well with existing experimental data as well as theoretical predictions and thus demonstrate the feasibility of the developed technique. Our setup is capable of detecting mass-changes as small as 10⁻⁵ μg/s, which corresponds to a removal of only 10⁻⁴ W monolayers/s.