Magnetic configuration of an epitaxial thin film of U2N3

DOI

UN is a prominent “advanced nuclear fuel”, due to its high uranium density and good thermal conductivity. However, its dissolution in water is worse than that of UO2 and is poorly understood. A strong possibility is that there are U6+ ions present, as these are known to be highly soluble, as opposed to the normal U4+ ions that dominate UO2 and are insoluble in water. These U6+ ions could come from U2N3, which is formed at the UN interface on oxidation and contains two U sites. U2N3 orders antiferromagnetically, and experiments on a thin epitaxial film at Diamond in Jan 2019 showed AF order at ~ 73 K with q = 1. No bulk single crystals exist and the phase is hard to stabilize. Since U6+ has no 5f electrons it cannot support magnetic order. We wish to measure the intensities of the first 6 AF reflections to determine the individual moments, and hence whether such a U6+ site exists.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1920180-1
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/108677819
Provenance
Creator Professor Sean Langridge; Dr Ross Springell; Dr Fabio Orlandi; Professor Gerry Lander; Miss Lottie Harding; Miss Eleanor Lawrence Bright
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2023
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Photon- and Neutron Geosciences
Temporal Coverage Begin 2020-02-27T08:30:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2020-03-02T09:12:26Z