A promising tritium breeding material: Nanostructured 2Li2TiO3-Li4SiO4 biphasic ceramic pebbles

Abstract As an advanced tritium breeder material for the fusion reactor blanket of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), Li 2 TiO 3 -Li 4 SiO 4 biphasic ceramic has attracted widely attention due to its merits. In this paper, the uniform precursor powders were prepared by hydrothermal method, and nanostructured 2Li 2 TiO 3 -Li 4 SiO 4 biphasic ceramic pebbles were fabricated by an indirect wet method at the first time. In addition, the composition dependence (x/y) of their microstructure characteristics and mechanical properties were investigated. The results indicated that the crush load of biphasic ceramic pebbles was better than that of single phase ceramic pebbles under identical conditions. The 2Li 2 TiO 3 -Li 4 SiO 4 ceramic pebbles have good morphology, small grain size (90 nm), satisfactory crush load (37.8 N) and relative density (81.8 %T.D.), which could be a promising breeding material in the future fusion reactor.