Boronization is a wall conditioning technique for fusion machines (such as tokamaks), where a thin film of boron is deposited on the walls of the vacuum vessel in order to reduce the impurity content (for example oxygen) which can be deleterious for fusion plasma operation.
The typical workflow involves performing a glow discharge and injecting a gas containing boron into the vacuum vessel chamber.
Boronization as a wall conditioning technique was first developed for the TEXTOR tokamak at the Forschungszentrum Jülich.
Unlike earlier approaches, it avoids the use of toxic diborane gas and allows continuous conditioning without interrupting plasma operations.
This approach is particularly valuable in long-pulse or steady-state devices, where traditional coatings may degrade quickly, helping to maintain wall integrity and limit impurities entering the plasma.