Uranium electronic structure in UxOy compounds by L-edges X-ray emission spectroscopy

Non-resonant X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) is a promising candidate to probe efficiently the speciation of actinide elements because XES can overcome the limitation usually encountered in standard techniques such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and High-energy Resolution Fluorescence detected X-ray Absorption spectroscopy (HERFD-XAS). However, XES sensitivity toward actinide’s speciation or local order is still missing, essentially because of the lack of the corresponding data. Therefore, we are proposing to perform extensive and systematic experiments on uranium oxide samples, showing various uranium speciation and local order. The obtained spectra will be then compared to electronic structure calculations, and when available XPS data, to build a better understanding of the uranium electronic structure in general and of the XES capability in particular.