Dr. Xiaofen Guo
Seminar Information
New types of fuel materials and ceramics are needed to be studied to support the advancement of emerging and next generation nuclear reactor technologies for both fission and fusion energy productions. The development of these materials requires a fundamental understanding and accurate description of their structures, thermochemical stability, mechanical properites, and phase equilibria. In our group, we apply a suite of structural-thermodynamic techniques to achieve this understanding.
In particular, high temperature calorimetry is employed to directly measure key enthalpy quantities, such as heat capacity, heats of phase transition, heats of reaction, mixing, and formation. To connect these thermodynamic insights with structural information, we combine synchrotron X-ray techniques and ab initio modeling to determine the chemical states and structural/electronic origins of observed behaviors. In this talk, I will present our recent results of nuclear fuel systems, including UO2, UN and UC ceramic fuels, as well as various chloride molten salt systems, relevant to molten salt reactors and fusion blanket materials.
Xiaofeng Guo is an associate professor of the Department of Chemistry and the Alexandra Navrotsky Institute for Experimental Thermodynamics at Washington State University. His current research interests are thermodynamics of f-block condensed matter systems. His radiological laboratories are equipped with various advanced high temperature calorimetric instruments capable of handling radionuclides in a large quantity. He also has expertise in synchrotron X-ray based scattering and absorption spectroscopies, and their applications in in situ high-pressure and high-temperature studies. Guo received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Davis in 2014. He was a G. T. Seaborg postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 2015 to 2017. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award in 2022, Early-Career and Emerging Researchers in Physical Chemistry in 2023, and Humboldt Fellow in 2025.