Synthesis of Li2TiO3 ceramic breeder powders by in-situ hydrolysis and its characterization

Abstract A novel in-situ hydrolysis method has been developed to prepare phase-pure and fine-grained Li 2 TiO 3 powders, using TiCl 4 and LiOH·H 2 O as the raw materials at temperature below 100 °C. The Li 2 TiO 3 precursor was directly synthesized by controlling hydrolysis conditions. The precursor was subsequently converted to Li 2 TiO 3 by calcination at 800 °C for 6 h. The obtained Li 2 TiO 3 powders were 80 nm in size on an average and showed a high phase purity and crystallinity. The Li 2 TiO 3 pellets exhibited an excellent sinterability with 12% of linear shrinkage and 90% of Theoretical Density (T.D.) obtained at 1050 °C for 4 h. The results show that the present in-situ hydrolysis method is a preferable and practically viable process to synthesize highly phase-pure and sinterable Li 2 TiO 3 powders.