Low-cost fabrication of Li2TiO3 tritium breeding ceramic pebbles via low-temperature solid-state precursor method

Abstract Lithium metatitanate (Li2TiO3) ceramic pebbles were fabricated from the powder synthesised via low-temperature solid-state precursor method. Solid H2TiO3 and LiOH·H2O react chemically during ball milling process to form a nano-sized precursor powder. Pure β-Li2TiO3 powder can be obtained by calcining the precursor powder at 500 °C, which is half the temperature of conventional solid-state method. The synthesis process is simple and low-cost, which would be more available to achieve batch production among all feasible techniques. The low-temperature calcination will effectively avoid hard particle aggregates and poor sinterability caused by high-temperature heat treatment, which is conducive to prepare ceramics with good properties. The results show that the powder exhibits high sinterability with small particle size of 19 nm. The Li2TiO3 ceramic pebbles sintered at 800 °C have small grain size (470 nm), high relative density (83%) and good crush load (45 N), which has great potential as tritium breeding materials for fusion reactors.