Fabrication and characterization of grain-oriented cerium fluoride ceramics from a slip-casting process in a magnetic field

Transparent CeF₃ ceramics may become a promising candidate in high-energy physics application due to their extremely high resistance to hadron-induced damage. To achieve a high transparency, the grain-oriented structure was necessary for CeF₃ ceramics to limit the light scattering caused by the birefringence effects due to its hexagonal phase structure. In the present work, this kind of structure was obtained by a slip-casting process within a magnetic field of either 9 T generated by a superconducting magnet or 0.4 T from a permanent magnet. X-ray diffraction and electron backscattered diffraction analysis proved that the c-axis of grains were well aligned parallel to the magnetic field direction. The Lotgering factor of 93.83 % indicated that a high degree of orientation was achieved by the magnetic field of only 0.4 T. It was due to the large susceptibility and the net magnetic anisotropy Δχ strongly enhanced by the spin–orbit interaction of the 4f electrons of Ce³⁺ ions that highly grain-oriented CeF₃ ceramics can be realized within such a low magnetic field.