Certainly not a typical material – the structure of Gadolinium Titanates

What does it look like?

Image generated by the VESTA (Visualisation for Electronic and STructural analysis) software http://jp-minerals.org/vesta/en/

What is it?

Certainly this material is not that typical material that you will find in your daily life (except some special people). Why is it so? This is because Gd₂TiO₅ finds its application as a burnable poison and neutron absorbing material in nuclear reactors. So, unless you are a special person that works in a nuclear reactor, you will not encounter this material on a daily basis.

Gd₂TiO₅ is used in nuclear reactors as it has good initial neutron absorption capability and irradiation resistance. It plays a role as an additional safety margin, which controls excessive reactivity in the reactor. Recently, researchers have been trying to use Gd₂TiO₅ for other applications such as memory devices, dielectric sensors, and for my own research, an anode material for sodium-ion batteries. Gd₂TiO₅ adopts an orthorhombic structure with lots of possible sites that can accommodate the insertions of ions. More importantly, Gd₂TiO₅seems to be very stable and does not undergo significant volume change during ion insertion.

Where did it come from ?

The structure of Gd₂TiO₅ is found on the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD) # 262620.

Tags: inorganic   batteries   neutron absorbing