Morphological and functional effects of graphene on the synthesis of uranium carbide for isotopes production targets

The development of tailored targets for the production of radioactive isotopes represents an active field in nuclear research. Radioactive beams find applications in nuclear medicine, in astrophysics, matter physics and materials science. In this work, we study the use of graphene both as carbon source for UO(2) carbothermal reduction to produce UC(x) targets, and also as functional properties booster. At fixed composition, the UC(x) target grain size, porosity and thermal conductivity represent the three main points that affect the target production efficiency. UC(x) was synthesized using both graphite and graphene as the source of carbon and the target properties in terms of composition, grain size, porosity, thermal diffusivity and thermal conductivity were studied. The main output of this work is related to the remarkable enhancement achieved in thermal conductivity, which can profitably improve thermal dissipation during operational stages of UC(x) targets.