Production of monodisperse uranium oxide particles and their characterization by scanning electron microscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry

Abstract Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) can be confidently used to measure uranium isotopic ratios in single particles. Dense particles of known isotopic composition and size allow the precision and the accuracy of the applied procedure to be estimated. These particles can be obtained by dissolving standard reference uranium materials, nebulizing the solution in droplets of proper diameter and collecting the particles after the desolvation and calcination of the droplets. A new instrumental set up, based on a commercial vibrating orifice aerosol generator to generate monodisperse droplets of the solutions from four uranium oxide reference materials, is described. The droplets were d…