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Electrical and material properties of hydrothermally grown single crystal (111) UO2

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Abstract

The semiconductor and optical properties of UO2 are investigated. The very long drift carrier lifetimes, obtained from current–voltage I(V) and capacitance–voltage C(V) measurements, along with the well-defined optical properties provide little evidence of an abundance of material defects away from the surface region. Schottky barrier formation may be possible, but very much dependent on the choice of contact and surface stoichiometry and we find that Ohmic contacts are in fact favored. Depth resolved photoemission provided evidence of a chemical shift at the surface. Density functional theory, with the Heyd-Scuseria-Ernzerhof (HSE) functional, indicates a band gap of a 2.19 eV and an anti-ferromagnetic ground state. Ellipsometry measurements indicates at UO2 is relatively isotropic with a band gap of approximately 2.0 eV band gap, consistent with theoretical expectations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering Physics, Air Force Institute of Technology, 2950 Hobson Way, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH, 45433-7765, USA

    Christina L. Dugan, Christopher Young, Michael Nastasi & James Petrosky

  2. University of Nebraska, Walter Scott Engineering Center, Lincoln, NE, 68588-0656, USA

    George Glenn Peterson

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Nebraska, Walter Scott Engineering Center, Lincoln, NE, 68588-0511, USA

    Alyssa Mock & Mathias Schubert

  4. Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH, 45433-7765, USA

    J. Matthew Mann

  5. Nebraska Center for Energy Sciences Research, University of Nebraska, 230 Whittier Research Center, 2200 Vine Street, Lincoln, NE, 68583-0857, USA

    Michael Nastasi

  6. CAS Key Lab of Materials for Energy Conversion, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, P.R. China

    Lu Wang & Iori Tanabe

  7. Department of Physics, University of Nebraska at Omaha, 60th and Dodge Streets, Omaha, NE, 68182-0266, USA

    Lu Wang & Wai-Ning Mei

  8. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Theodore Jorgensen Hall, 855 North 16th Street, Lincoln, NE, 68588-0299, USA

    Peter A. Dowben

Authors
  1. Christina L. Dugan
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  2. George Glenn Peterson
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  3. Alyssa Mock
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  4. Christopher Young
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  5. J. Matthew Mann
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  7. Mathias Schubert
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  8. Lu Wang
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  9. Wai-Ning Mei
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  10. Iori Tanabe
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  11. Peter A. Dowben
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  12. James Petrosky
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Correspondence to Christina L. Dugan.

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Dugan, C.L., Peterson, G.G., Mock, A. et al. Electrical and material properties of hydrothermally grown single crystal (111) UO2. Eur. Phys. J. B 91, 67 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2018-80489-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2018-80489-x

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