Freestanding titanium metallic aerogel

Abstract

Nanoporous titanium was prepared by an in-situ template confined synthetic strategy involving the magnesiothermic reduction on TiO2 aerogel template at relative low temperature and hydrochloric acid etching process. The resulting self-supporting monolith with α titanium as the major phase retained the similar morphology of initial template and exhibited a high specific surface area about 99.1m2/g. In addition, as the ideal laser-irradiated target material for production of multi-keV X-rays, the titanium aerogel has successfully realized the voluminal heating when irradiated by the high-energy laser pulse on the Shenguang-II facility, and the Ti K-shell emitted X-ray spectrum ranging from 3 to 9keV was detected using X-ray elliptical crystal spectrometer. More importantly, the result could provide significant reference for further research about the application of metal aerogel target in the field of the multi-keV X-ray sources, which was essential for radiography of inertial-confinement-fusion (ICF) experiments.