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Published Online February 28, 2002
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1069342

Reports

Submitted on December 26, 2001
Accepted on February 13, 2002

Noble Gas-Actinide Compounds: Complexation of the CUO Molecule by Ar, Kr, and Xe Atoms in Noble Gas Matrices

Jun Li 1, Bruce E. Bursten 2*, Binyong Liang 3, Lester Andrews 3*

1 Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352, USA.
2 Department of Chemistry, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
3 Department of Chemistry, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: bursten.1{at}osu.edu (B.E.B.); lsa{at}unix.mail.virginia.edu (L.A).

The CUO molecule, formed from the reaction of laser-ablated U atoms with CO in a noble gas, exhibits very different stretching frequencies in a solid argon matrix [804.3 and 852.5 wavenumbers (cm-1)] than in a solid neon matrix (872.2 and 1047.3 cm-1). Related experiments in a matrix consisting of 1% Ar in Ne suggest that the Ar atoms are interacting directly with the CUO molecule. Relativistic density functional calculations predict that CUO can bind directly to one Ar atom (U-Ar = 3.16 angstroms; Ebinding = 3.2 kilocalories per mole), accompanied by a change in the ground state from a singlet to a triplet. Our experimental and theoretical results also suggest that multiple Ar atoms can bind to a single CUO molecule.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Formation of unprecedented actinidecarbon triple bonds in uranium methylidyne molecules.
J. T. Lyon, H.-S. Hu, L. Andrews, and J. Li (2007)
PNAS 104, 18919-18924
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)