Research by Boise State graduate Ember Sikorski, with professors Brian Jaques and Lan Li, was featured on the cover of the most recent edition of the Journal of Applied Physics. This work, titled “First-principles magnetic treatment of the uranium nitride (100) surface and effect on corrosion initiation” sought to understand the significant effect magnetic properties have on uranium nitride (UN) performance as a nuclear fuel. Through computational modeling, ferromagnetic was found to be the most energetically favorable magnetic structure of (100) UN. Electron localization function revealed more charge localized to AFM uranium atoms with spin-down electrons than uranium atoms with spin-up electrons.
You can see this edition of the Journal of Applied Physics and read the full article here.