Electrical conductivity of GdCl3-LiCl and GdCl3-LiCl-Gd2O3 molten systems

The electrical conductivity of LiCl-GdCl3 molten systems with the gadolinium chloride additions ranging from 0 to 23 mol% was measured depending on both the temperature and concentration of GdCl3. The molar electrical conductivity of the molten GdCl3-LiCl system is calculated taking into account the assumption of additivity of the molar volume of the mixture. The obtained temperature dependencies can be approximated by Arrhenius-type equation. The effective activation energy Ea increased with the GdCl3 content. The liquidus temperatures of the studied systems were determined by differential scanning calorimetry. The high-temperature Raman spectra of LiCl-GdCl3 chloride melts were recorded. In addition, the electrical conductivity of 0.77LiCl-0.23GdCl3 molten system with 1 mol% of Gd2O3 was measured. The investigation demonstrates that the addition of gadolinium oxide results in a decrease of the electrical conductivity of the chloride molten system and growth of its liquidus temperature