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(Invited) Uranium Endohedrals: New Frontiers in Fullerene Chemistry

Monday, 29 May 2017: 10:00
Churchill A2 (Hilton New Orleans Riverside)
J. Murillo, W. Cai (Univ. of Texas at El Paso), X. Zhang (Soochow University), D. Najera (Univ. of Teaxs at El Paso), E. L. Romero, C. Suarez, A. J. Metta-Magana (University of Texas at El Paso), N. Chen (Soochow University), and L. Echegoyen (The University of Texas at El Paso)
Uranium endohedrals are an emerging class of fullerenes that may hold extraordinary properties and exhibit remarkable chemical features.[i] [ii] Our group been on the forefront of research in this area and have made progress in the synthesis of these novel compounds. By optimizing reactive conditions, we have seen a markedly improved selective production of uranium endohedrals using the KraetschmerHuffmann arc discharge process. Here we report the successful synthesis of several families of uranium endohedrals characterized by mass spectrometry which include clusters of the type U2X (X= C, N, O). Mono-metallic uranium endohedrals, with general formula U@Cn, have also been synthesis and characterized by x-ray crystallography (see Fig 1.) Electrochemical studies of some of these new compounds have been conducted and are reported herein. These findings realize a two-decade long effort in the scientific community for physical studies of such endohedral fullerenes. [iii] [iv] [v]


[ii] Dunk, Paul W., Kaiser, Nathan K., Mulet-Gas, Marc; Rodriguez-Fortea, Antonio, Poblet, Josep M., Shinohara, Hisanori, Hendrickson, Christopher L., Marshall, Alan G., Kroto, Harold W., Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2012, 134(22), 9380-9389

[iii] Guo, T., Diener, M. D., Chai, Y., Alford, M. J., Haufler, R. E., McClure,S. M., Ohno, T., Weaver, J. H., Scuseria, G. E., Smalley, R. E., Science, 1992,257, 1661.

[iv] Diener, M. D., Smith, C. A., Veirs, D. K., Chem. Mater., 1997, 9, 1773