The structure of soddyite-exafs shell fitting and wavelet analysis

Many uranyl (U(VI)) minerals have a characteristic layer structure in the equatorial plane due to the strong electrovalence of the two axial oxygen atoms. For structures containing heavy atoms like U, the XRD patterns are dominated by the backscattering from the heavy atoms, while the positions of light atoms like O or Si may be occasionally inaccurate. The EXAFS spectrum were measured of a soddyite sample of Renaud Vochten’s collection of uranium minerals at 30 K. The local structure determined by shell fitting is fairly consistent with crystallographic data. Wavelet analysis clearly resolved the Si and U atoms at nearly the same distance between 3.6 and 3.9 Å.