All entries for Friday 16 September 2022

September 16, 2022

12 g/cc mark has been breached!

Why this is important? Significance of this milestone can be well understood from the fact that the most common material used for radiation shielding was lead whose density is 11.29 g/cc. That’s why this number 12 g/cc is important. In addition to that density/porosity has direct effect on radiation atenuation. The goal was to achieve similar densities under lab based environment with different sintering technique. In this case, horizontal furnace with Ar as inert atmosphere. These samples were sintered at 1450 ^oC for 4h under Ar atmosphere. Sintering with different composition and sintering conditions (table 1) were performed, so that the final density can be fine-tuned.

Table 1: Densities of various compositions at specific sintering conditions for RSB55

Compositions	Sintering Temperature (In ^oC)	Dwell time (In hr)	Density (g/cc)
RSB55_Regular	1450	4	11.72
RSB55_2xC	1450	4	12.06
*RSB55_2xCr*	*1450*	4	*12.14*
RSB55_Large_2Cr	1450	4	12.03
RSB55_Large_2C	1450	4	10.72

What next? In the upcoming weeks, we will be using N₂as the atmosphere for sintering. Hopefully, we will achieve the final density of 12.3 g/cc and with that it will be the time for gen. 3 materials. With present milestone, stay tunned for more details at SOFT22. Figure : RSB55_Large_2Cr sample: Needle like structure of WB

Figure : RSB55_Large_2Cr sample: Needle like structure of WB