Engineering a novel material: Nanometric titanium carbide particles in a matrix of carbon nanotubes

New physics studies at ISOLDE are motivated by new beams available, especially beams of exotic nuclei located at the frontier of the nuclear chart. Such beams are often short lived (in the order of milliseconds) and decay before they can be extracted from the target material, where typical diffusion times are in the order of seconds or more. Novel nanostructured and nanocomposite target materials have been developed to increase the release efficiency by reducing the diffusion paths and so the diffusion times, allowing ISOLDE to deliver new and more intense beams of exotic nuclei. 35Ca (25 ms half-life) was attempted by developing a titanium carbide and carbon black nanocomposite, but such isotope could not be extracted. A different production method with different precursors - titanium oxide and multiwall carbon nanotubes - is here proposed and expected to yield a target material which will increase the release rates of such isotope. A novel material, very porous, consisting of titanium carbide particles dispersed in a matrix of carbon nanotubes was produced. Two different titanium oxide precursors were studied and heat treated up to 2100C. Shrinkage and mass loss results show that both materials are stable up to the referred temperatures. BET, SEM and XRD will be done in the next steps.