A Study on Helium Glow Discharge Cleaning in the HL-1M Tokamak

Based on the principle of ion-bombarded reemission and sputtering desorption, the Glow Discharge Cleaning with helium (GDC(He)) is an effective method for controlling the recycle of H on the chamber wall, Carbon(C), Oxygen(O) impurity and improving the wall conditioning in HL-1M tokamak. It is characterized by simplicity without magnet and safety, compared with Taylor Discharge Cleaning (TDC), Alternating current glow discharge Cleaning (AC), Electron Cyclotron Resonance-Discharge Cleaning (ECR-DC). Compared with bake-out degassing, the wall has a higher degassing rate during GDC(He) and a lower impurity concentration in vacuum chambers after GDC(He). Cleaning patterns have been developed dominantly for de-oxidization, decarbonization and de-hydrogenization. The cleaning parameters for H recycle on the wall are also presented. This paper mainly describes the GDC system along with its parameters, breakdown voltage, volt-ampere characteristic, the range of operation safe and suitable cleaning patterns in the HL-1M tokamak, finally concluding with some suggestions on HL-2A GDC.