A team from North Carolina State University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and JEOL printed full-size tungsten tiles by electron-beam powder bed fusion and installed them in the DIII-D tokamak's lower divertor in July 2026; three days of direct plasma exposure across 74 high-confinement discharges at medium-to-high power followed, and the tiles are now being removed, imaged and surface-scanned for comparison, with NC State leading the analysis (
American Nuclear Society). The full-size tiles — about 140 × 130 mm, the largest printed tungsten the team had produced, worked on JEOL's large-format JAM-5200EBM — follow 2025 button-scale tests on DIII-D's Divertor Materials Evaluation System that near 20 MW/m² heat flux with brief peaks above 35 MW/m² and minimal surface damage. Watch: NC State's post-exposure condition report, printed tungsten at larger fusion scales, and uptake by other tokamak programs.
