Electrical breakdowns occasionally occur near the first walls of fusion reactor chambers and the accelerating cavities of linear colliders, such as CLIC. These arcing events are localised plasma discharges, which are formed under high voltage electrical fields. Vacuum arcs cause various surface damage on the fusion reactor and linear accelerator structures. The surface damage, most significantly craters, have been studied experimentally, but the mechanism of the formation of this damage is still not clear.
In this thesis we use the large-scale molecular dynamics simulations to study crater formation on Cu surface. We used ion irradiation to model the arcing events, where plasma ions are accelerated via the shield potential towards the metal surface. This ion irradiation causes multiple overlapping cascades in Cu surface, what can lead to the crater formation. The main goal was to be able to produce surface damage, which is identical to experimental results.
Our results are divided to three categories. First we examined which are initial conditions needed to form experimental like craters. The electric field emission current accompanying the plasma discharge process, most likely, is to heat the sample locally to very high temperatures. Therefore we tested molten and solid structures at different temperatures, as well as different scenarios of cooling of the sample via electronic heat conduction.
Second, we examined how different variables, such as the fluence of the ions, the energy flux or the potential model, affect on the crater shape. These results were compared with the experimental crater profiles in order to find out reasonable values. We also analysed how the volume of the produced crater depends on fluence.
Our third part of investigation was not actually concentrated on the surface damage, but on dislocations and other damage under the surface. We again studied how different parameters affect on the results. We compared the simulations by calculating the number and ratio of non-FCC atoms in the bulk. The fluence dependency of the defects was studied as well.
