Wednesday, 16 May 2018: 08:20
Room 204 (Washington State Convention Center)
The successful isolation and characterization of Th@C82, U@C82, U@C74 have shown that actinide fullerenes have unique properties which are previously unknown to the endohedral fullerene world. Now, with the further exploration of actinide endohedral fullerenes based on U and Th, we found these endohedral fullerenes are unique for not only fullerene chemistry but also to actinide chemistry. U@C80 and U@C76 have been found to process Non-IPR cages, which are rare cases for the mono metallic endohedral fullerenes. Th@C86 and U@C86, on the other hand were found to share the same IPR cages, where have never been reported before. The crystallographic and computational studies of U2C@Ih-C80 reveal reveals a cage-stabilized, carbide-bridged, bent UCU cluster with unprecedentedly short uranium-carbon distances (2.03 Å) of genuine U=C double-bond character. The isolation of U2C@C80 gives an unprecedented look into a long sought after but heretofore unknown U=C bond which lacks heteroatom support, allowing for detailed structural and electronic insights.