Doniach diagram for ordered, disordered and underscreened Kondo lattices

The Doniach's diagram has been originally proposed to describe the competition between the local Kondo effect and the intersite RKKY interactions in cerium compounds. Here we discuss the extension of this diagram to different variations of Kondo lattice model. We consider a) ordered cerium compounds where the competition between magnetic order and Kondo effect plays an important role, as $CeRh_2Si_2$, b) disordered cerium systems with competing spin glass phase, magnetic ordered phases and a Kondo phase, as the heavy fermion cerium alloy $CeCu_xNi_{1-x}$ and, c) uranium compounds where a coexistence between Kondo effect and ferromagnetic order has been observed, as UTe. We show that all these cases can be described by a generalized Doniach phase diagram.Comment: Presented in the Latin American Workshop on Magnetism and Magnetic Materials (LAW3M) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 12-16, 2007. Proceedings to be published in JMM

Monometallic cerium layered double hydroxide supported Pd-Ni nanoparticles as high performance catalysts for lignin hydrogenolysis

Monometallic cerium layered double hydroxides (Ce-LDH) supports were successfully synthesized by a homogeneous alkalization route driven by hexamethylenetetramine (HMT). The formation of the Ce-LDH was confirmed and its structural and compositional properties studied by XRD, SEM, XPS, iodometric analyses and TGA. HT-XRD, N-2-sorption and XRF analyses revealed that by increasing the calcination temperature from 200 to 800 degrees C, the Ce-LDH material transforms to ceria (CeO2) in four distinct phases, i.e., the loss of intramolecular water, dehydroxylation, removal of nitrate groups and removal of sulfate groups. When loaded with 2.5 wt% palladium (Pd) and 2.5 wt% nickel (Ni) and calcined at 500 degrees C, the PdNi-Ce-LDH-derived catalysts strongly outperform the PdNi-CeO2 benchmark catalyst in terms of conversion as well as selectivity for the hydrogenolysis of benzyl phenyl ether (BPE), a model compound for the alpha-O-4 ether linkage in lignin. The PdNi-Ce-LDH catalysts showed full selectivity towards phenol and toluene while the PdNi-CeO2 catalysts showed additional oxidation of toluene to benzoic acid. The highest BPE conversion was observed with the PdNi-Ce-LDH catalyst calcined at 600 degrees C, which could be related to an optimum in morphological and compositional characteristics of the support

Co-reduction of aluminium and lanthanide ions in molten fluorides : application to cerium and samarium extraction from nuclear waste

This work concerns the method of co-reduction process with aluminium ions in LiF–CaF2 medium (79–21 mol.%) on tungsten electrode for cerium and samarium extraction. Electrochemical techniques such as cyclic and square wave voltammetries, and potentiostatic electrolyses were used to study the co-reduction of CeF3 and SmF3 with AlF3. For each of these elements, specific peaks of Al–Ce and Al–Sm alloys formationwere observed by voltammetry aswell as peaks of pure cerium and aluminium, and pure samarium and aluminium respectively. The difference of potential measured between the solvent reduction and the alloy formation suggests expecting an extraction efficiency of 99.99% of each lanthanide by the process. Different intermetallic compounds were obtained for different potentiostatic electrolysis and were characterised by Scanning Electron Microscopy with EDS probe. The validity of the process was verified by carrying out cerium and samarium extractions in the form of Al–Ln alloy; the extraction efficiency was 99.5% for Ce(III) and 99.4% for Sm(III)