Morphology of UO2

The sintering of UO2 green pellets is influenced by the morphology of the crystallites. This study predicts equilibrium and growth morphologies of UO2 crystallites, based on five different interatomic potential models that were derived in order to understand properties of the bulk material. It was found that despite the differences between these models, all result in essentially the same morphologies. The equilibrium morphology of UO2 is an octahedron, showing only {111} faces. The growth morphology is a truncated octahedron, exhibiting {111} and {200} facets. (orig.)