Hydrothermal synthesis of novel actinide solids

The use of hydrothermal synthesis has had a great influence on the preparation of novel inorganic actinide compounds. This mild method has been successfully utilized to prepare new phases of uranium, neptunium, and plutonium bearing materials. The amount of structural information that has been gathered on these elements is sparse compared to those of inorganic transition metal and lanthanide containing compounds. The synthesis and characterization of uranium, neptunium, and plutonium compounds containing various anionic ligands is discussed. Uranium(VI) fluorides and uranium(VI), neptunium(VI), and plutonium(VI) iodates are characterized by single crystal X-ray diffraction and various other spectroscopic techniques, such as IR/Raman spectroscopy. These compounds all differ in structural architectures and range in dimensionality from one-dimensional, as in the anhydrous UO₂(IO₃)₂ to three-dimensional as found in Ag₄[(UO₂)₄(IO ₃)₂(IO₄)₂O₂]. Also, interesting trends have been shown in extending the iodate research to the transuranic elements of neptunium and plutonium. The actinide element coordination in these compounds is examined as well as their characterization and structural trends.