Actinide coordination chemistry has been applied to many chemical processes in the nuclear fuel reprocessing and the treatments of HLW. The recovery of U and Pu from a spent fuel solution has been already established for 50 years, while, HLW treatments are still under developing and the separation of trivalent actinides from lanthanide is one of the important issues on the volume reduction of the HLW prior to geological disposal.The elucidation of chemical bond and structural properties of actinides with neutral soft-donor molecules are key information for design for a new ion recognition reagent between trivalent actinides and lanthanides. Especially, it is important to note participation of generally-localized 5f electron into chemical bond across the filled 6s and 6p orbitals. Recently, the evidences of the covalent interactions were experimentally proved by the N 2p of partial density of state (PDOS) of Cm-1,10-phenanthroline complex using the XAS/XES. The fact that the interaction is contributed by the 5f electrons was supported by also the DFT calculation methods. On the other hand, the 1,10-phenanthroline (phen) derivatives which show another unique feature on the isolation of a special lanthanide or actinide were obtained, and the selectivity for a special ion, in addition, was clarified to depend on the N-N distances of a phen. As a result, we proposed to apply this unique feature for isolation of Nd or Am using pseudo-enantiomer formation. In this presentation, based on these results, molecular design and development of a new ion recognition reagent for separation of An(III) and Ln(III) will be introduced in detail.

Molecular design and development of new ligand for selective separation of a specific lanthanide or actinide ion by pseudo-enantiomer system

243rd National Meeting (2012)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.