Freestanding titanium metallic aerogel

• The magnesiothermic reduction method was used to prepare the self-assembling monolithic titanium aerogel.
• The resulting titanium aerogel retained the similar morphology of TiO2 template.
• The titanium aerogel target has successfully realized the voluminal heating when irradiated by the high-energy laser.
• Low density and homogeneous microstructure of Ti aerogel target could significantly improve the conversion efficiency.

Nanoporous titanium was prepared by an in-situ template confined synthetic strategy involving the magnesiothermic reduction on TiO2 aerogel template at relative low temperature and hydrochloric acid etching process. The resulting self-supporting monolith with α titanium as the major phase retained the similar morphology of initial template and exhibited a high specific surface area about 99.1 m2/g. In addition, as the ideal laser-irradiated target material for production of multi-keV X-rays, the titanium aerogel has successfully realized the voluminal heating when irradiated by the high-energy laser pulse on the Shenguang-II facility, and the Ti K-shell emitted X-ray spectrum ranging from 3 to 9 keV was detected using X-ray elliptical crystal spectrometer. More importantly, the result could provide significant reference for further research about the application of metal aerogel target in the field of the multi-keV X-ray sources, which was essential for radiography of inertial-confinement-fusion (ICF) experiments.

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