Abstract:
Ab initio calculation is performed to investigate the uranium solubility in different sites of Gd
2Zr
2O
7 pyrochlore. The Gd
2Zr
2O
7 maintains its pyrochlore structure at low uranium dopant levels, and the lattice constants of Gd
2(Zr
2-yU
y)O
7 and (Gd
2-yUy)Zr
2O
7 are gen-erally expressed as being linearly related to the uranium content y. Uranium is found to be a preferable substitute for the B-site gadolinium atoms in cation-disordered Gd
2Zr
2O
7 (where gadolinium and zirconium atoms are swapped) over the A-site gadolinium atoms in orderedGd
2Zr
2O
7 due to the lower total energy of (Gd
2-yZr
y)(Zr
2-yU
y)O
7.