Mesbah Adel, Clavier Nicolas, Lozano-Rodriguez M Janeth, Szenknect Stephanie, Dacheux Nicolas
ICSM, UMR 5257 CEA/CNRS/ENSCM/University of Montpellier , Site de Marcoule-Bât. 426, BP 17171, 30207 Bagnols-sur-Cèze cedex, France.
HZDR, Institute of Resource Ecology, The Rossendorf Beamline at ESRF , P.O. Box 220, 38043 Grenoble, France.
Inorg Chem. 2016 Nov 7;55(21):11273-11282. doi: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.6b01862. Epub 2016 Oct 17.
Pure powdered compounds with a general formula ThEr(SiO)(PO) belonging to the zircon-xenotime family were successfully synthesized under hydrothermal conditions (250 °C, 7 days) as recently reported for the preparation of coffinite. Therefore, a thorough, combined PXRD, EDX, EXAFS, Raman, and FTIR analysis showed the formation of a solid solution in agreement with Vegard's law. Moreover, the examination of the local structure shows that the Th-O distances remain close to those found in ThSiO, whereas the Er-O distances show a significant decrease from 2.38(14) to 2.34(7) Å when increasing the erbium content from x = 0.2 to x = 1. The variation of the local structure also affects the PO groups that are surely distorted in the structure.
