Hayton, from Santa Barabara, presented his recent work with uranium (VI) compounds. The chemistry of Uranium (VI) is dominated by the formation of Uranyl (UO₂)²⁺.  However, the Hayton group was able to synthesize and fully characterize U(O^tBu)₆ (1). The compound was reacted with aryl-alcohols in the hope of producing U(OAr)₆ (2) compounds, shown below.

Unfortunately, due to the presence of lithium from earlier steps he prepared (3) and after doing a better job ridding his reagents of lithium produced (4).

The work highlights the difficulty in synthesizing stable uranium (VI) compounds, but perhaps if they don’t use the electron withdrawing fluorine on their arylalcohols they might better stabilize the U⁺⁶.

More Info: Synthesis and Characterization of Three Homoleptic Alkoxides of Uranium

Mitch

The ability to selectively extract actinides out of nuclear waste remains a hot research topic. Today Hancock, from Wilmington, gave a presentation on several tetradentate ligands that bind to actinides more strongly than other smaller metals.  The systems he investigated are shown below.

The PDA ( system was highlighted for its rigidity, fluorescent potential, and the size of its cavity. Some formation data below.

These types of systems look promising and is a nice upgrade over traditional old-school extractors like Tributylphosphate(TBP).

Much of the talk was covered in this recent paper: Affinity of the Highly Preorganized Ligand PDA…

Mitch

I’ll be attending the ACS-Philadelphia conference next week. One of the sessions sponsored by the Environmental division is called “New Energy Technology” on Wednesday morning out at the DoubleTree-Maestro B. The title implies itself to wonderful talks discussing frontiers in applied energy chemistry. Unfortunately, the session is completely dominated by the left-field cold fusion people. A list of the talks are shown below

• Cold fusion in light of green chemistry (Jan Marwan)
• Low energy nuclear reactions research: 2008 update (Steven B. Krivit)
• Overview of LENR research: Critical steps on the pathway to technology(Michael Charles Harold McKubre)
• Macroscopic quantum dynamics and the problems of loading in Pd-H(D) systems (Antonella De Ninno, Emilio Del Giudice, Antonio Frattolillo)
• CR-39 studies of Pd/D codeposition (P. A. Mosier-Boss, Stanislaw Szpak, Frank E. Gordon, Lawrence Forsley)
• Study of the nanostructured palladium deuterium system (Jan Marwan)
• Sonofusion from deuterons to helium (Roger Stringham)

My feelings on cold fusion research have been stated previously here: The difference between cold fusion and cold fusion

It would be in good taste to attend the session, and let them have the opportunity to present their research, but I question whether I could sit through it. If you find yourself bored on Wednesday morning and ready for a lively debate, I’d recommend attending this session.

Mitch