Structural, electronic, mechanical and thermodynamic properties of U–Si intermetallic compounds: A comprehensive first principles calculations

Abstract

Uranium silicides are proposed as the prominent accident tolerant fuels for the light water reactors (LWR) due to their high metal density and high thermal conductivity. Among the U–Si alloys, the alloy with high U:Si ratio is more favorable for nuclear fuel application due to the higher uranium density. Thus, the crystal structure, mechanical property, electronic structure, phonon band structure and thermodynamic property of U3Si, U3Si2 and USi compounds, along with the thermodynamic reaction between U–Si intermetallic compounds are systematically studied in our work. The optimized structural parameters of these U–Si alloys are comparable with previous results. Besides, all of them are metallic in nature. Since the calculated elastic constants satisfy the Born stability criteria, one can know U–Si alloys are mechanically stable. The phonon dispersion curves are obtained based on the density functional perturbation theory (DFPT). Accordingly, various thermophysical properties, such as Helmholtz free energy, heat capacity, internal energy and entropy are calculated. Furthermore, the reaction energies related to the formation of U3Si, U3Si2 and USi as well as transformation between them are calculated. It is revealed at the same chemical environment the reaction to form USi occurs more easily, whereas the high temperature and sufficient uranium environment are more in favor for fully silicification of uranium metal into U3Si. Theoretical investigation of this work is expected to provide some new insights for the application of uranium silicides as nuclear fuels and future exploration on the design and synthesis of new-type uranium silicides.