Research on the preparation of ceramic tritium breeders in SICCAS

This paper summarized our research work on the preparation of ceramic tritium breeders with different shapes, such as Li2TiO3 and Li4SiO4 pebbles, γ-LiAlO2 ceramic bars, γ-LiAlO2 ceramic rings and so on. Li2TiO3 and Li4SiO4 ceramic spheres with favorable sphericity were obtained by a newly developed method, the water-based sol–gel process, which was expected to lead to a scale up to a low cost and efficient manufacturing process for mass production. The ionic conductivity of Li2TiO3 was enhanced significantly by introducing appropriate dopants to the matrix materials, which was probably helpful to the release and inventory performance of the tritium. Gel-casting and plastic forming process were conducted to fabricate γ-LiAlO2 ceramic bars and ceramic rings, respectively. It was found that the rheological and chemorheology behaviors of the precursors were influential to the fabrication process.