Structural and compositional characterization of single crystal uranium dioxide thin films deposited on different substrates

• DOI: 10.1016/j.tsf.2017.07.020
• Publication Date: 2017-07-10T19:01:21Z
• Authors: Mohamed S. Elbakh...; Brent J. Heuser
• Keywords: Orthorhombic crystal system

Abstract Uranium dioxide thin films were deposited on single crystal TiO 2 , Al 2 O 3 , YSZ, ZnO and NdGaO 3 substrates to optimize conditions for the growth of high quality single crystal films. X-ray diffraction results show that all the films have one growth direction and well defined peaks in the specular scans with the expected symmetry for each growth orientation. The UO 2 /Al 2 O 3 , TiO 2 , and ZnO films have high concentration of misfit dislocations that increase with the lattice mismatch. The UO 2 film on YSZ is found to be in registry with the substrate. The film has narrow mosaic component that is imposed upon a broader component arises from the diffuse scattering due to defects in the film. Meanwhile, UO 2 /NdGaO 3 film shows a splitting of the X-ray diffraction peaks which is attributed to the in-plane asymmetry of the orthorhombic substrate.