Mohamed,

The answer to that would depend on the relative amounts of U and Sr that you probe simultaneously with the beam, as well as what you mean by “interference”. By 1000 eV above the edge oscillations from the EXAFS are largely gone (relative to the edge step). So I would say that Sr K-edge oscillations are unlikely to interfere with your U L-edge oscillations, unless your U L-edge step is say 500x smaller than your Sr edge step or the Sr atoms are in a very tight binding environment (not sure if STO qualifies) and you decide to measure the spectra at LN temperature.  Your bigger problem will likely be collecting the U EXAFS data with sufficient signal-to-background ratio. Attached is an XRF spectrum from a U-contaminated sediment containing Sr (not sure what the Sr:U ratio is, but I think it is small), measured in a relatively high energy resolution mode of a Ge detector. You can imagine the Sr line being many many times bigger in your system, so the U line may end up being a small blip on the left shoulder of the Sr line. A solid state detector will probably not be able to sufficiently separate the two signals. You may have to use grazing incidence geometry to minimize the substrate Sr signal and/or use a high energy resolution detector to separate the U and Sr lines (e..g a bent Laue analyzer). Both of the latter will make the experiment non-trivial, so be prepared for some extra work :-).

Finally, the answer will depend on the level of detail you are hoping to get from the measurement. If all you are interested in is proving the formation of uraninite then the U-U coordination should be relatively easy to see in a Fourier transform in spite of all the possible “interference” effects discussed above.

Cheers,

Max.

---

From: ifeffit-bounces@millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov [mailto:ifeffit-bounces@millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov] On Behalf Of mohamed sobhy
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 3:38 PM
To: ifeffit@millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov
Subject: [Ifeffit] UO2 thin films on STO

Dear All
I would like to grow UO2 thin films on STO (SrTiO3) substrate but I found that Sr K-edge 16105 and U L3-edge is 17166. Do you think there will be any interference?
Best,

Mohamed