Intermetallic materials have garnered scientists' attention for many decades due to characteristics such as refractory properties, superconductivity, and heavy fermion behavior. The flux-growth method has proven to be a successful technique to grow novel intermetallic single crystals. In this method, one or more low melting metals are used in excess, providing a solution-based approach. Compared to traditional solid-state synthesis, this method allows the formation of kinetically stable, complex materials and the growth of crystals. In this work, an aluminum and gallium mixture is used as the flux to grow intermetallic compounds containing actinide (U, Th, Np) and transition metals (Mn, Ni, Co). Actinides are of interest due to their applicability in the nuclear fuel cycle and their inherent intriguing magnetic properties. Incorporating transition metals allow the possibility of f electrons coupling with the d electrons. Al and Ga fluxes have been studied extensively but using a mixture of these metals has not been explored in depth. Changing the reagents and the flux ratio led to the formation of different products such as UMn4Al8-xGax, UMn2Al20-xGax. Synthesized materials were characterized using single-crystal X-ray diffraction, SEM-EDS, and magnetic susceptibility measurements.

Synthesizing novel actinide intermetallic compounds using Al/Ga flux

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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