Structural and microstructural characterization of U3Si2 nuclear fuel using X-ray diffraction

Abstract

In this work, two uranium silicide powdered samples, containing 67% and 42 mol% of Si, were analyzed using X-ray diffraction (named as 67Si and 42Si). For structural characterization, Rietveld refinement was used to estimate cell parameters, volume fraction (weight percent) of crystalline phases and atomic positions. For the main phases, X-ray line profile analysis (XLPA) was used to estimate mean crystallite sizes and microstrains. The 67Si sample presents higher content of USi2 (tetragonal) and the 42Si sample presents higher content of U3Si2 (tetragonal) as identified and calculated from the XRD profiles. Overall there are no appreciable structural changes and the parameters refined are in good accordance with the ones reported in the literature. Mean crystallite sizes determined by XLPA revealed small crystallites of the order of 101 nm and low microstrain for all samples.