Uranium-silicon alloys

Abstract

A tentative U-Si phase diagram was determined by the present authors about 10 years ago. A description of the experimental work has not been published in the open literature, although the resulting phase diagram did appear in the National Nuclear Energy Series.¹ In 1949 Zachariasen² published crystal structure determinations for the U-Si intermetallic compounds and came to the conclusion that several of the formulas assigned to the compounds by Kaufmann et al. were in error. The purpose of the present paper is to describe the original work done in 1944 and, in particular, to discuss some of the properties of one of the intermediate phases, known as ϵ, whose formula is approximately U₃Si.