Enhancing the density and crush load of Li2TiO3 tritium breeding ceramic pebbles by adding LiNO3-Li2CO3

Abstract

The fabrication of Li2TiO3 ceramic pebbles with satisfactory density and excellent crush load while maintaining a fine grain structure is one of the research objectives of solid tritium breeders. However, densification and grain refinement are often contradictory in lithium-containing ceramics during the sintering process. In this work, LiNO3-Li2CO3 was added during the preparation of Li2TiO3 green spheres by the wet process, and the formation of LiNO3-Li2CO3 molten salt resulted in the significant sintering improvement of Li2TiO3 ceramic pebbles. The addition of LiNO3-Li2CO3 increased the density of Li2TiO3 ceramic pebbles by 10.47 % (92.63 % vs. 82.16 %) and the crush load by more than four times (144.54 N vs. 28.2 N). ICP-OES analysis showed that the lithium content of the Li2TiO3 ceramic pebbles was slightly increased by the addition of LiNO3-Li2CO3. Overall, the difficulty of balancing grain refinement and densification in lithium-containing tritium breeders can be addressed by the proposed method.