Inverse photoemission of uranium oxides

Understanding the itinerant-localised bonding role of the 5f electrons in the light actinides will afford an insight into their unusual physical and chemical properties. In recent years, the combination of core and valance band electron spectroscopies with theoretic modelling have already made significant progress in this area. However, information of the unoccupied density of states is still scarce. When compared to the forward photoemission techniques, measurements of the unoccupied states suffer from significantly less sensitivity and lower resolution. In this paper, we report on our experimental apparatus, which is designed to measure the inverse photoemission spectra of the light actinides. Inverse photoemission spectra of UO2 and UO2.2 along with the corresponding core and valance electron spectra are presented in this paper. UO2 has been reported previously, although through its inclusion here it allows us to compare and contrast results from our experimental apparatus to the previous Bremsstrahlung Isochromat Spectroscopy and Inverse Photoemission Spectroscopy investigations.