Optical Studies of Lanthanide and Actinide Ions in Solution

The development of new and the application of existing methods for optical characterization of lanthanide and actinide ions in solution is described. Chapter 1 focuses on probing the energy levels of trivalent lanthanide ions in condensed aqueous and non-aqueous media. Cavity ring-down and thermal lensing spectrometers were developed to study the trivalent ytterbium ion at concentrations well-below those previously reported in the literature. Chapter 2 provides a historical background for uranyl ion speciation and introduces Raman scattering, the technique used in Chapter 3 to characterize the aqueous uranyl-histidine system in solution along with optical absorption, luminescence, and VMinteq calculations.