A preliminary study on the preparation of nanostructured Ti-doped Li4SiO4 pebbles by two-step sintering process

Li4SiO4 has been widely studied as attractive tritium breeding materials due to its innate merits. Considering the potential advantages of nanostructure in tritium breeding materials, a distinctive process was developed to obtain nanostructured Li4SiO4 pebbles. In brief, ultrafine precursor powders were synthesized by solvothermal method without using surfactants, and then indirect wet method was adopted to generate the green spheres with homogeneous microstructure. After that, the suitable sintering conditions were defined by studying the effects of sintering parameters on the grain size evolution, and nanostructured Ti-doped Li(4)Sia(4) pebbles were first obtained by two-step sintering method. This study will be expected to provide references for fabricating other Li based tritium breeding materials.