Lithium tritelluride is an intercalary compound of

lithium Lithium (from el, λίθος, lithos, lit=stone) is a chemical element with the symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense solid ...

and

tellurium Tellurium is a chemical element with the symbol Te and atomic number 52. It is a brittle, mildly toxic, rare, silver-white metalloid. Tellurium is chemically related to selenium and sulfur, all three of which are chalcogens. It is occasionally fo ...

with

empirical formula In chemistry, the empirical formula of a chemical compound is the simplest whole number ratio of atoms present in a compound. A simple example of this concept is that the empirical formula of sulfur monoxide, or SO, would simply be SO, as is t ...

. It is one of three known members of the Li-Te system, the others being the raw metals and

lithium telluride Lithium telluride (Li2Te) is an inorganic compound of lithium and tellurium. Along with LiTe3, it is one of the two intermediate solid phases in the lithium-tellurium system. It can be prepared by directly reacting lithium and tellurium in a ber ...

(). LiTe₃ was first discovered in 1969 by researchers at the

US Atomic Energy Commission The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President ...

., as cited in . Research into the compound has been primarily driven by the possibility of using molten tellurium salts to cool a

nuclear reactor A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. Heat from nu ...

. Lithium tritelluride can be synthesized by heating a mixture of the appropriate stoichiometry. It is unstable below ; if left below that temperature, it will decompose, releasing tellurium vapor">Tellurium says b.p. is 449 C. Low vapor pressure? Sic for molten?-->. Structurally, lithium tritelluride is composed of

parallel Parallel is a geometric term of location which may refer to: Computing * Parallel algorithm * Parallel computing * Parallel metaheuristic * Parallel (software), a UNIX utility for running programs in parallel * Parallel Sysplex, a cluster of I ...

graphene Graphene () is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a Single-layer materials, single layer of atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure.

-like planes of tellurium. Atoms in these planes are aligned to form "vertical" columns of tellurium; the lithium ions then form columns running through the center of each tellurium hexagon.

References

{{Lithium compounds Lithium compounds Tellurium compounds