Fundamental properties of octalithium plumbate ceramic breeder material

Abstract Octalithium plumbate (Li 8 PbO 6 ) is a candidate for use as a breeder material in future D-T tokamak fusion reactor designs. Key to the development of a breeder blanket is the characterisation of candidate materials. Therefore, density functional theory (DFT) simulations are used to examine the fundamental elastic, electronic and thermal properties of Li 8 PbO 6 . A comparison is made between two different DFT simulation packages to demonstrate the validity of the results given in this article and as compensation for a lack of experimental data to compare to in the literature. Finally, formation energies are calculated for lithium vacancy defects as well as tritium accommodated as substitutional defects on the lithium site, as these are expected to be some of the most common types of defect in the breeder blanket during reactor operation.