Graphene derived lanthanum carbide targets for the SPES ISOL facility. Issue 14 (1st October 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Corradetti, S.; Carturan, S.M.; Andrighetto, A.; Mariotto, G.; Giarola, M.; Fabrizi, A.; Maddalena, A.; Biasetto, L.
• Is Part Of: Ceramics international. Volume 43:Issue 14(2017)
• Page Start: 10824
• Page End: 10831
• Publication Date: 2017-10-01
• Subjects: Carbothermal reaction -- Multilayered graphene -- Sintering -- Carbides; Ceramics -- Periodicals; Céramique industrielle -- Périodiques; Ceramics; Periodicals; Electronic journals; 666
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ceramint.2017.05.106
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0272-8842

Abstract

Abstract: Lanthanum carbide based targets were produced as benchmark tests before the production of radioactive uranium carbide targets. Carbides possessing excess carbon and porosity seem to be the best candidates as target for the production of exotic beams in the SPES-ISOL facility. In addition, the capability of tailoring properties such as grains size and pores size represents a step ahead to improve the ions release efficiency. In this work, multilayered graphene was used as source of carbon for the production of LaCx and the main physical properties of the produced targets were compared to standard LaCx produced using micrometric graphite. The main output of the work consisted in the reduced total porosity (28.8 vol% vs 47.8 vol%) and increased shrinkage (20.4 vol% vs 5.8 vol%) of the LaCx -Graphene samples compared to LaCx -Graphite ones. This result showed how graphene can be successfully employed as sintering aid for the sintering of carbides. Further studies are ongoing with UO2 as starting reagent for carburization within the project AUL-2013-16-176 "Study of the use of graphene as source of carbon for Uranium Carbide-Graphene nanocomposites production" now under conclusion at the European Commission DG Joint Research Centre – JRC. Highlights: Multilayered graphene was used for the very first time as carbon source for the carburization reaction of La2 O3. The reaction kinetic showed a similar trend to the carburization of La2 O3 using micrometric graphite. The graphene derived LaCx showed a 40 vol.% less porosity and 70 vol.% higher shrinkage than the graphite derived LaCx . It is expected that graphene could be used as sintering aid for the production of fully dense carbides. .