Rational Design of Ceramic Interfaces for Environmental Technologies
EMSL Project ID
47464
Abstract
The aim of this research proposal is to advance the fundamental science needed to safely immobilize nuclear waste in durable ceramic matrices. Crystalline ceramics, including polyphase materials, are promising candidates for the long-term isolation of high-level nuclear waste from the biosphere, because they are more resistant to radiation damage and dissolution in the presence of water compared to glass, which is currently favored for nuclear waste disposal in the United States. Most studies of radiation effects in ceramics to date have focused on single crystalline materials, which are not practical from the standpoint of producing inexpensive waste forms in industrial quantities (tons). Ceramic composites that can be synthesized in a scalable manner from inexpensive and locally-sourced raw materials need to be developed to meet this daunting environmental challenge. At present, there is very little understanding of radiation damage and dissolution at ceramic interfaces, and this lack of understanding is a serious impediment to high-level nuclear waste immobilization. Given the millennial time scale of the service life of nuclear waste forms, the material of choice is required to have mechanisms for self-healing of damage. Such self-healing materials have many potential applications outside the environmental realm, for instance in the injection of ceramic nanoparticles to promote healing of biological tissue through the elimination of free radicals and reactive oxygen intermediates that cause cell damage. We propose an integrated study that will combine predictive modeling with well-designed synthesis and characterization experiments to understand the evolution of radiation damage at ceramic interfaces. Our proposed work is built on the hypothesis that we can control the evolution of radiation damage and the resulting enhanced dissolution by designing ceramic interfaces to promote self-healing. We will begin with computational predictions of the types of interfaces that are likely to tolerate radiation over the long term with minimal structural disorder or property change. We will then test the predictions by synthesizing ceramic composites with the desired interfacial characteristics. We will use EMSL’s ion accelerator system to not only perform ion implantation of ceramics, but also create novel ceramic interfaces using ion implantation followed by annealing. We will use EMSL’s state-of-the-art characterization capabilities to study the evolution of the interfaces and validate our models. Our proposed research couples EMSL’s leadership-class computing facilities with unique synthesis and characterization capabilities to advances the fundamental science of interfaces in nano-ceramics. We will create an open source database of the experimental and modeling data and use sophisticated data analysis tools to facilitate knowledge discovery. The team consists of long-time expert users of EMSL capabilities with expertise in computational materials science, materials synthesis, ion implantation, and characterization. Our proposal is very well-aligned with EMSL’s mission of integrating experimental and computational resources for discovery and technological innovation in the environmental molecular sciences. By seeking to understand the interaction of matter and energy at interfaces in multi-component materials, this research directly addresses the EMSL Science Theme “Science of Interfacial Phenomena”.
Project Details
Project type
Large-Scale EMSL Research
Start Date
2012-10-01
End Date
2014-09-30
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Co-Investigator(s)
Team Members
Related Publications
Devanathan R, F Gao, and CJ Sundgren. 2013. "Role of cation choice in the radiation tolerance of pyrochlores." RSC Advances 3(9):2901-2909. doi:10.1039/C2RA22745B
Guedes S, P Moreira, R Devanathan, WJ Weber, and JC Hadler. 2013. "Improved zircon fission-track annealing model based on reevaluation of annealing data." Physics and Chemistry of Minerals 40(2):93-106. doi:10.1007/s00269-012-0550-8