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The realization of fusion energy requires materials that can withstand high heat and particle fluxes at the plasma material interface. In this work, an electrothermal (ET) plasma source has been designed as a transient heat flux source for a linear plasma material interaction device. An ET plasma source operates in the ablative arc regime driven by a DC capacitive discharge. The current channel width is defined by the 4 mm bore of a boron nitride liner. At large plasma currents, the arc impacts the liner wall, leading to high particle and heat fluxes to the liner material, which subsequently ablates and ionizes. This results in a high density plasma with a large unidirectional bulk flow out of the source exit. The pulse length for the ET source has been optimized using a pulse forming network to have durations of 1 and 2 ms. The peak currents and maximum source energies seen in this system are 1.9 kA and 1.2 kJ for the 2 ms pulse and 3.2 kA and 2.1 kJ for the 1 ms pulse, respectively. This work is a proof...

To produce a realistic tokamak-like plasma environment in linear plasma device, a transient source is needed to deliver heat and particle fluxes similar to those seen in an edge localized mode (ELM). ELMs in future large tokamaks will deliver heat fluxes of ∼1 GW/m2 to the divertor plasma facing components at a few Hz. An electrothermal plasma source can deliver heat fluxes of this magnitude. These sources operate in an ablative arc regime which is driven by a DC capacitive discharge. An electrothermal source was configured with two pulse lengths and tested under a solenoidal magnetic field to determine the resulting impact on liner ablation, plasma parameters, and delivered heat flux. The arc travels through and ablates a boron nitride liner and strikes a tungsten plate. The tungsten target plate is analyzed for surface damage using a scanning electron microscope.