XANES calculations of actinide-based materials

XANES, with its high sensitivity to the oxidation state and the local structure, is a very powerful tool to investigate actinide-based materials. The use of the High-Energy-Resolution Fluores-cence-Detected (HERFD) mode opened new perspective in this field. By reducing the core-hole lifetime broadening, HERFD allows a relevant gain in resolution at the L3 edge and a major im-provement for M4,5 edges.
The information contained in a XANES spectrum are often hard to extract and therefore need the support of theory. However, calculations of actinide materials made complex by the compa-rable strength of intra-electronic interactions, spin-orbit and influence of the local environment. Efforts are ongoing to take all the relevant physics into account, however today none of the the-oretical framework used in XANES calculations can account for all relevant interactions over a large cluster of atoms.
If we do not yet have a unique theoretical framework that can be applied to all actinide systems, we can still select the theory that is more adapted to specific cases. In this contribution we will present progresses in the interpretation of XANES of actinide systems obtained by using the DFT–based code FDMNES [1]. Results at the L3 and M4,5 edges on Th4+ and U6+ systems will be presented [2-4]. These systems, where the intra-electronic interactions are less relevant due to the absence of 5f valence electrons, are particularly suited to investigate the importance of the local environment on the spectral shape.
Our results endorse the use of HERFD XANES coupled with DFT-based calculations to investi-gate complex actinide-containing systems.