Sintering Behavior of Lead Oxide Ceramic Prepared by Microwave Sintering

The structure material corrosion in liquid lead or lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) is a tremendous limitation of the development of lead cooled fast reactors and accelerator driven sub-critical system (ADS). Keeping a certain oxygen concentration can prevent the steel pipe from corrosion by LBE. Through dissolution and precipitation of PbO ceramic has been found to control the oxygen concentration successfully. This paper presents research on a new technology of processing lead oxide ceramic. The raw material, pure lead oxide powder and deionized water, without any other chemical substances, were dry-pressed, placed in sample holder and heated in household microwave oven. Compare with conventional sintered ceramics, the microwave sintered lead oxide ceramics show better density, greater hardness. The results show that this promising technique has distinguished characteristics of energy-saving, rapid processing and better hardness and microstructure.