Growth and surface morphology of uranium films during molecular plating

Molecular plating is a widely used technique for the preparation of lanthanide and actinide targets. We have studied the growth and surface morphology of uranium films during the molecular plating process using atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, Raman and IR spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence. During deposition of U films on 10 μm Al backings by molecular plating, the RMS roughness increased from 17 to 446 nm for deposition times up to 45 min and then decreased to 223 nm for deposition times of 120 min, which gave the smoothest films with a fractal dimension of 2.10.