Fabrication methods for lithium based ceramic material development-A Review

Abstract

The development of breeder fabrication technology has been exclusively devoted to manufacturing processes for pebbles, since most solid breeder blanket designs are based on pebble-beds and TheLithium based ceramics is one of the most important components of a fusion reactor because it directly involvesboth energy extraction and tritium production, both of which are critical to fusion power and have a long been recognized as promising tritium-breeding materials for Test Blanket Modules (TBM) of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) The world-wide efforts on ceramic breeder materials in the last two years concerned Li2O, Li4SiO4, Li2TiO3 and Li2ZrO3, and Li2TiO3. The lithium-basedceramics have shown good irradiation behavior and excellent tritium release characteristics. Individual materialsperformance will depend upon the actual application, namely, pebble bed versus pellet concept, higher versus lower cooling temperature, etc. There are different methods: extrusion/spheronization, melting/spraying, gelcasting, wet method.