Li4SiO4 slurry conditions and sintering temperature for fabricating Li4SiO4 pebbles as tritium breeders for nuclear-fusion reactors

A tritium breeder is a lithium-based material capable of producing tritium. Many researchers designing nuclear-fusion energy are studying tritium production using pebbles, which are solid-type breeders. The sphericity and size of the pebbles are critical in obtaining pebbles with good tritium-breeding efficiency. Furthermore, tritium-release efficiency can be increased by using pebbles with appropriate porosities. Promising raw materials for tritium-breeding materials include Li4SiO4 and Li2TiO3. Li4SiO4 has a higher lithium density than Li2TiO3 and exhibits excellent tritium-breeding efficiency. However, it has the disadvantage of being easily decomposed during the Li4SiO4-green-pebble sintering process because of its low structural stability at high temperatures and high lithium density. In this study, we attempted to determine the optimal conditions for manufacturing Li4SiO4 pebbles using the droplet–freeze-drying method. The optimal Li4SiO4 slurry conditions and sintering temperatures were determined. The optimal Li4SiO4 slurry-fabrication conditions were 3 wt% polyvinyl alcohol and 75 wt% Li4SiO4 based on the deionized-water weight content. The sintering temperature at which Li4SiO4 did not decompose and exhibited the optimum porosity of 10.8% was 900 °C.