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Rare Earth and Actinide Materials

A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 May 2024 | Viewed by 2130

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Molecular Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Interests: thermal analysis and calorimetry; high temperature diffraction; rare earth oxides
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
School of Molecular Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Interests: thermochemistry; rare-earths; synthesis; structure; nuclear materials

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Guest Editor
Ningbo Institute of Industrial Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ningbo, China
Interests: actinide materials; thermodynamics; solid state chemistry

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Ancient Greek philosophers used the term “earth” to refer to all solid matter—materials—of the Universe. After two millennia, the term has survived in references to alkaline earth and rare earth (RE) groups of elements in the periodic table. The latter commonly includes lanthanides, yttrium, and (arguably) scandium. While most abundant RE elements (Sc, Y, La, and Ce) are indeed rarer than most abundant alkaline earth metals (Ca and Mg), rare earth are critical for the creation materials used by modern society. Indeed, they span the applications from permanent magnets and superconductors to catalysts, ceramics, and environmental barrier coatings. Among actinides, only thorium was widely used in material design outside of the nuclear field. The chemistry of rare earth elements and the structure of their compounds is often used as a guide to actinides; lanthanides are formed as fission products and play a role in the design and reprocessing of nuclear materials. This Special Issue is devoted to rare earth and actinides. Expert submissions related to experimental research and computations on rare earth and actinide materials will be considered for publication.

Dr. Sergey V. Ushakov
Dr. Tamilarasan Subramani
Dr. Lei Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • rare earth
  • lanthanides
  • actinides
  • nuclear materials
  • synthesis
  • structure
  • thermochemistry
  • magnetic properties
  • phase equilibria
  • calculation of phase diagram

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

18 pages, 1891 KiB  
Review
Thorium and Rare Earth Monoxides and Related Phases
by Sergey V. Ushakov, Qi-Jun Hong, Dustin A. Gilbert, Alexandra Navrotsky and Axel van de Walle
Materials 2023, 16(4), 1350; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16041350 - 05 Feb 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1709
Abstract
Thorium was a part of energy infrastructure in the 19th century due to the refractory and electronic properties of its dioxide. It will be a part of future energy infrastructure as the most abundant energy reserve based on nuclear fission. This paper discusses [...] Read more.
Thorium was a part of energy infrastructure in the 19th century due to the refractory and electronic properties of its dioxide. It will be a part of future energy infrastructure as the most abundant energy reserve based on nuclear fission. This paper discusses the solid-state chemistry of the monoxides and related rocksalt phases of thorium and the rare earths, both at atmospheric and at high pressure. The existence of solid thorium monoxide was first suggested more than 100 years ago; however, it was never obtained in bulk and has been studied mostly theoretically. Monoxides of lanthanides from Eu to Ho are ferromagnetic semiconductors sought for spintronics and were studied in thin films. La to Sm metallic monoxides were synthesized in bulk at pressures below 5 GPa. Recently, ThO formation in thin films has been reported and the stability of bulk ThO at high pressure was theoretically predicted based on first principles computations at 0 K. New ab initio computations were performed accounting for temperature effects up to 1000 K using lattice dynamics in the quasi-harmonic approximation. New computational results confirm the stabilization of pure ThO above 30 GPa and suggest the possibility of high-pressure synthesis of (Th,Nd)O at 1000 K and 5 GPa. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rare Earth and Actinide Materials)
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