Investigation of kinetics of lithium ferrite formation under electron beam treatment

Abstract

The paper considers kinetic laws of lithium ferrite synthesis under heating of mixtures of the initial Fe2O3–Li2CO3 reagents of different prehistory (powder, compact, mechanically activated mixture) with a high-energy electron beam. The synthesis temperature range was (600–750) °C, and the holding time was up to 120 min. The study employed an ILU-6 pulsed accelerator with electron energy of 2.4 MeV. Formation of ferrite in conventional thermal annealing at similar temperature and time conditions was studied for comparison. XRD analysis was the main method to study the synthesized samples. It is found that the rate of ferrite formation depends on both the heating method and the density and activity of the initial mixture. It is shown that high-energy electron beam heating of the mechanically activated mixture significantly accelerates ferrite production, which is indicated by decreased kinetic parameters of ferrite synthesis.