PNNL

Abstract

In this chapter, we will present an overview of the theoretical and computational developments that have increased our understanding of the electronic structure of actinide-containing molecules and ions. The application of modern electronic structure methodologies to actinide systems remains one of the great challenges in quantum chemistry; indeed, as will be discussed below, there is no other portion of the periodic table that leads to the confluence of complexity with respect to the calculation of ground- and excited-state energies, bonding descriptions, and molecular properties. But there is also no place in the periodic table in which effective computational modeling of electronic structure can be more useful. The difficulties in creating, isolating, and handling many of the actinide elements provide an opportunity for computational chemistry to be an unusually important partner in developing the chemistry of these elements. The importance of actinide electronic structure begins with the earliest studies of uranium chemistry and predates the discovery of quantum mechanics. The fluorescence of uranyl compounds was observed as early as 1833 (Jørgensen and Reisfeld, 1983), a presage of the development of actinometry as a tool for measuring photochemical quantum yields. Interest in nuclear fuels has stimulated tremendous interest in understanding the properties, including electronic properties, of small actinide-containing molecules and ions, especially the oxides and halides of uranium and plutonium. The synthesis of uranocene in 1968 (Streitwieser and Mu¨ ller-Westerhoff, 1968) led to the flurry of activity in the organometallic chemistry of the actinides that continues today. Actinide organometallics (or organoactinides) are nearly always molecular systems and are often volatile, which makes them amenable to an arsenal of experimental probes of molecular and electronic structure (Marks and Fischer, 1979). Theoretical and computational studies of the electronic structure of actinide systems have developed in concert with the experimental studies, and have been greatly facilitated by the extraordinary recent advances in high-performance computational technology. We will focus on computational studies of the electronic structure of discrete (molecular or ionic) actinide-containing systems. We begin by discussing some of the general tenets of bonding that are relevant to the actinide elements and some of the challenges that are unique to this field. We then present the results of computational electronic structure studies on a variety of molecular actinide systems. The literature of molecular electronic structure of actinide systems has been compiled by Pyykko¨ (1986, 1993, 2001), as well as being available as a database on the web (http://www.csc.fi/rtam). Pepper and Bursten (1991) reviewed the methodology and applications in the field in 1991. The reader is referred to those reviews for some of the details on earlier studies in this field. We restrict our discussion in this chapter to molecular actinide systems and do not discuss the extensive body of research in the use of theoretical electronic structure methods to model solid-state actinide chemistry. The reader is referred to Chapter 21 and some recent review articles (Lander et al., 1994; Soderlind, 1998; Wills and Eriksson, 2000) for discussions of theoretical electronic structure methods applied to the metallic actinide elements and solid-state actinide compounds. We will also have minimal discussion of compounds of the transactinide elements in this chapter. The electronic structure of compounds of the transactinides is discussed in Chapter 14 and in the excellent review by Pershina (1996).