Progress in additive manufacturing of pure tungsten for plasma-facing component applications

In the present paper, recent progress regarding additive manufacturing (AM) of pure tungsten (W) by means of laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) is discussed. In this context, several aspects are highlighted: The influence of the raw powder material characteristics on the resulting W part quality is briefly discussed, examples for complexly shaped additively manufactured W lattice structure samples are shown, the application of an additively manufactured W structure as preform for a tungsten-copper (W-Cu) composite is illustrated and thermal shock experiments on additively manufactured bulk W samples with the electron beam facility JUDITH 2 are described. The latter demonstrates that W material consolidated by means of LPBF is capable of surviving intense thermal shock loads. This is an encouraging result indicating that the thermal performance and stability of W fabricated by means of LPBF is comparable to that of conventionally fabricated W which in turn implies that the further investigation of additively manufactured W as candidate material with regard to applications in highly loaded plasma-facing components (PFCs) of future magnetic confinement thermonuclear fusion devices can be considered worthwhile.