Abstract
THORIUM disilicide was first described by Brauer and Mitius1, who isolated single crystals and reported the crystal structure to be tetragonal with the space group I4/amd. Later, Zachariasen2 described an isostructural uranium disilicide observed initially during metallurgical examinations by Kaufmann, Cullity and Bitsianes3. Another phase, thought by Kaufmann et al. to be U2Si3 and also studied by Zachariasen, was found to have a hexagonal crystal structure of the AlB2-type, space group C6/mmm. The crystal structure results led Zachariasen to suggest that this compound was a second form of uranium disilicide and he designated it β-USi2. The tetragonal uranium and thorium disilicides accordingly became the alpha forms. More recently, Jacobson, Freeman, Tharp and Searcy4 obtained a thorium silicide isostructural with Zachariasen's β-USi2, but observed that the silicon content was lower than that of α-ThSi2. They used the description ‘β-ThSi2’ but suggested that the true composition was ThSi1.5±0.2.
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References
Brauer, G., and Mitius, A., Z. anorg. Chem., 249, 325 (1942).
Zachariasen, W. H., Acta Cryst., 2, 94 (1948).
Kaufmann, A. R., Cullity, B., and Bitsianes, G., Trans. Amer. Inst. Mech. Eng., 209, 203 (1957).
Jacobson, E. L., Freeman, R. D., Tharp, A. G., and Searcy, A. W., J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 78, 4850 (1956).
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BROWN, A., NORREYS, J. Beta-Polymorphs of Uranium and Thorium Disilicides. Nature 183, 673 (1959). https://doi.org/10.1038/183673a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/183673a0
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