Intermediate Compounds and the Nickel-Uranium Binary System
Phase Poll #11 concluded yesterday with a fairly even split between nickel (53%) and uranium (47%). We also got one vote for a temperature of 1000K, thanks to @grimmtaupe. The Ni-U diagram is really only considered in the space of nuclear alloys, and isn’t very popular even then, so we’re going to spend some time on this post talking about intermediate compounds.
I’ve already briefly discussed congruently melting compounds vs. incongruently melting compounds, after the conclusion of phase poll #7. These definitions focus on phase transitions, while defining intermediate compounds starts to delve into the realm of solid solubility. Uranium and nickel have very low solid solubility below ~600°C (or ~873K). This can be seen from the numerous vertical lines on the phase diagram, each of which represents a specific intermediate compound, defined as simply phases with compositions that fall between two neighboring phases. Intermediate compounds almost always have a different crystal structure than the neighboring phases as well.
Solid solutions, on the other hand, can be continuous (like in the Ni-Cu phase diagram), primary/terminal (the fcc Ni phase and the bcc U phase at either side of the Ni-U phase diagram), or intermediate (like the hcp phase in the Ag-Al phase diagram). The primarily vertical lines on a phase diagram can thus give a visual indication of the solid-solubility of two elements across their compositional space.
Back to the chosen composition, our alloy would be primarily Ni9U7. Not much is known about this compound, but the thing about phase diagrams is that they’re difficult to create, even if computational tools have accelerated the process in modern times. Some research (ref. 3 below) into nickel-uranium alloys suggests that the phase is actually U10Ni13, and crystalizes in a monoclinic crystal structure. If we consider the temperature as well, we can see from our previous definitions that Ni9U7 is an incongruently melting compound. For the nickel uranium system in general, small additions of nickel have been shown to promote sintering of uranium carbides.
Sources/Further reading: ( Ni-U: 1/image 2 ) ( Ni-U: 2 ) ( Ni-U: 3 ) ( Phase diagrams: 1 ) ( Phase diagrams: 2 ) ( Phase diagrams: 3 )
More phase diagrams: ( image 1 ) ( weight and atomic percent nickel, 1 ) ( weight and atomic percent nickel, 2 ) ( weight and atomic percent uranium )