Tritium release from lithium aluminate: can it be improved?

Lithium aluminate is an attractive material (in terms of its chemical, mechanical and irradiation properties) for breeding tritium in fusion reactors; however, its tritium release characteristics are not as good as those of other candidate materials. To investigate whether tritium release from lithium aluminate can be improved, we have studied the tritium release from irradiated samples of pure lithium aluminate, lithium aluminate doped with Mg, and lithium aluminate with a surface deposit of platinum. The release was studied by the temperature programmed desorption (TPD) method. Both the platinum coating and magnesium doping were found to improve the tritium release characteristics, as determined by TPD. Tritium release shifted to states with lower activation energies for the altered materials.