PROGRESS ON SOLID COMPOUNDS OF ACTINIDES

The preparation of solid actinide compounds at the European Institute for Transuranium Elements covers topics from metal refining to the synthesis and characterization of new materials in single-crystal form. A review of techniques used in the preparation chemistry of transuranium elements is presented. Reliable and sensitive characterization techniques have been developed to yield a good description of the quality of the samples. It is important that the characterization includes more than chemical (impurities, traces, etc.) and metallurgical (defects, inclusions, composition, crystal structure, etc.) analyses but also initial physical properties. We report our progress in the study of families of compounds such as pnictides, chalcogenides and binary and ternary intermetallic compounds.