Scientists discover new heavy metal molecule “berkelecene”

Among the major advances in major elemental chemistry, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory successfully created and characterized “berkelecene,” the first organometallic molecule to contain berkelium-carbon bonds. The achievement, published last week in Science, challenges a traditional understanding of how heavy radioactive elements interact with carbon-based structures.

Working with just 0.3 mg of radioactive berkelium-249, the team made a molecule with berkelium Atom located between two carbon rings “sanded” between two carbon rings, similar to how a hamburger is between two breads. This configuration allows scientists to observe for the first time the direct chemical bond between mountain copper and carbon atoms.

Scientists at the Berkeley Laboratory’s chemical scientist, one of the four corresponding authors of the study, are the first to obtain evidence of the formation of chemical bonds between patina and carbon. “This discovery provides a new understanding of how Burke and other actinides are relative to their peers in the periodic table. ”

Berkelium with atomic number 97 belongs to the radioactive elements in the F block of the Actinide Series-15 Periodic Table. The element is historically important to the Berkeley Lab, which was discovered by Glenn Seaborg in 1949, and later won the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the sternum element.

Creating the Berkelecene molecule presents several challenges. Berkelium is highly radioactive, extremely rare, and produces only tiny quantities worldwide each year. In addition, it is well known that organometallic molecules are unstable in the air.

“There are only a few facilities around the world that protect compounds and workers while managing the combined hazards of highly radioactive materials, which react violently with the oxygen and moisture in the air,” explains Polly Arnold, a chemical scientist at Berkeley Laboratory and author of another colleague.

To overcome these obstacles, the team designed custom glove boxes at the Heavy Elements Research Laboratory in Berkeley Laboratory, which can perform airless synthesis through highly radioactive isotopes. The isotopes used in the experiment were distributed from the National Isotope Development Center, which is managed by the Energy Isotope Division Program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

This study shows an unexpected discovery–the berkelium atom at the center of the borkelium structure has a tetravalent oxidative state (+4 positive charge) that is stabilized by the copper-base-carbon bond.

“The traditional understanding of the periodic table shows that girls behave like Rantanid’s terbium,” said the Minas. “But in the +4 oxidation state, the girl ions are happier than the other F-block ions we expect to like the most.”

Rebecca Abergel, who heads the heavy element chemistry group at Berkeley Lab and serves as another corresponding author, highlights the importance of their discovery: “This clearer portrait like Berkelium provides a new lens for the behavior of these fascinating elements.”

The team used single-crystal X-ray diffraction experiments to determine the structure of the Asphalt Eocene, thus revealing the symmetrical arrangement of berkelium atoms sandwiched between two 8-membered carbon rings. The molecule has a structure similar to the Uranium Eocene, an organic metal complex of uranium that was discovered in the late 1960s by UC Berkeley chemists Andrew Streitwieser and Kenneth Raymond.

Electronic structure calculations performed by co-corresponding author Jochen Autschbach of the University of Buffalo provide deeper insight into Berkelium’s unique behavior, helping to explain why it forms stable bonds with carbon-stable bonds in a different way than related elements.

The team believes that their work could help develop more accurate models to show how actinide behavior changes in the periodic table, which could prove that this could be valuable in solving challenges related to long-term nuclear waste storage and remediation.

In addition to its direct scientific implications, the discovery of the Asphalt Epoch also represents a technical achievement in dealing with extremely scarce and dangerous materials. The entire experimental process from synthesis to characterization must be completed within approximately 48 hours to minimize radioactivity attenuation complications.

The researchers custom designed their methods using copper, a non-radioactive element with similar chemical properties, to ensure that their procedures can be used with valuable berkelium samples.

Many acttinide organometallic compounds were first studied since the Manhattan project, but compounds involving elements heavier than platium are still rare. Burke Oil’s discovery builds on the latest advances in transplant chemistry, including the first structural verification of the Amerimium-Cobon-Cobon-Cobon-Cobon-Cobon-Cobon-Coar bonds reported in 2019 and 2021.

This work is supported by the Department of Energy’s Science Office and provides new avenues to explore fundamental chemistry of heavy elements within the range of elemental cycles.