Abstract For the coating of divertor wings, which in an adapted form may also be suitable for divertor targets, tungsten coatings were developed and optimized with respect to erosion and adhesion behaviour and tested in the Jülich JUDITH facility as well as in the St. Petersburg TSEFEY facility. For the improvement of adhesion, interlayers were developed and used for the coating of mock-ups. In order to achieve a further improvement in adhesion and thus better heat removal, structures were developed for the substrate surfaces. Substrate materials are copper according to DIN 1787 and the Elmedur X copper-chromium-zircon alloy. Differently produced tungsten coatings on mock-up substrates were loaded until failure by means of an electron beam. The area-related thermal loads introduced until failure were measured and correlated with the production parameters.