A Review of the Present Status and Future Prospects of the Application of Liquid Metals for Plasma-Facing Components in Magnetic Fusion Devices

The application of liquid metals for plasma-facing components draws increasing interest as a potential means to resolve the technical issues associated with exhaust power and particle handling in magnetic fusion devices beyond the International Thermonuclear Reactor Experiment (ITER). However, our knowledge is extremely limited at present about the physics as well as chemistry of the interactions between liquid metals and edge plasmas in a strong magnetic field. This paper is intended to provide a review of the present status and future prospects of this subject.