The low-temperature heat capacity of (U1-yAm )O 2− for y = 0.08 and 0.20

Abstract The low-temperature heat capacity of (U 1-y ,Am y )O 2− x solid solution with y = 0.0811 and 0.2005 and x = 0.01–0.03 was determined from a minimum of 12.52 K up to 297.1 K and from 9.77 K up to 302.3 K, respectively, using hybrid adiabatic relaxation calorimtry. The low temperature heat capacity results of the investigated system revealed the absence of the magnetic transition specific for UO 2 in the temperature region of 30 K. Since there are no experimental data available for AmO 2 in this temperature region, the results obtained for the intermediate compositions are validated based on the experimental data of UO 2 end-member and the low-temperature heat capacity computation of AmO 2 . In the measured temperature interval, excess heat capacity was observed for the two investigated intermediate compositions, which is concluded to be dominated by self-radiation effects at very low temperature.