| AVS 55th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Surface Science | Thursday Sessions |
| Session SS2-ThA |
| Session: | Novel Reactive Surfaces |
| Presenter: | H.G. García Flores, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Los Alamos National Laboratory |
| Authors: | H.G. García Flores, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Los Alamos National Laboratory D.P. Moore, Los Alamos National Laboratory J.P. Baiardo, Los Alamos National Laboratory D.L. Pugmire, Los Alamos National Laboratory |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
The oxidation of metal surfaces is an important application of kinetic modeling because it allows for the study of the influence of transport processes in a gas-solid reaction. Understanding the oxidation kinetics of plutonium is desired because this process can have an impact in the storage and handling of this radioactive element. The goal of this presentation is to investigate the early stages of the corrosion of plutonium in an attempt to elucidate the oxidation kinetics, in particular at the initial rapid stage of the oxidation. The data presented here will be evaluated with an inverse-logarithmic kinetic rate law, which has not previously been used to describe the oxidation kinetics of plutonium. The paralinear and parabolic models generally employed to describe oxide film growth of plutonium do not explain this rapid initial stage of oxide film growth of plutonium. To this aim, ellipsometry, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) & Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) data recently collected at Los Alamos and the ellipsometry data presented by Larson & Cash in the Journal of Physical Chemistry1 will be used to perform a comparison of the kinetic models for oxygen corrosion of plutonium.
1 D.T. Larson, D.L. Cash, J. Phys. Chem., 73 (1969) 2814.