Synthesis and radiation tolerance of Lu2_xCexTi2O7 pyrochlores

As a nonradioactive surrogate for Pu, Ce is selected to study the solubility and radiation tolerance in pyrochlore matrixes. In this paper, we synthesized a series of Lu-2_xCexTi2O7 (x = 0-0.7) samples. X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy were used to study the structure of Lu-2_xCexTi2O7 (x = 0-0.7) with different Ce3(+) content x. The results show that the maximum solubility of Ce3+ in Lu2Ti2O7 is 32 mol%. In order to study the radiation tolerance of these compounds, 400 kev Ne2+ was used to perform the irradiation experiments. The grazing incident X-ray diffraction patterns revealed that the radiation tolerance of the Lu-2_xCexTi2O7 decreases with increasing Ce-content. This correlation between radiation tolerance and Ce-content was interpreted in terms of the antisite defect formation energies of Lu-2_xCexTi2O7 (x = 0, 0.5, 1) based on the density functional theory. (c) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.