Californium(III) polyborate

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Californium(III) polyborate
Names
Other names
Californium borate
Identifiers
Properties
Cf[B6O8(OH)5]
Molar mass 526.90 g/mol [1]
Appearancepale green plates
Density 3.842 g/cm3, solid
Structure
monoclinic [1]
C2/c
a = 6.849 Å, b = 18.809 Å, c = 101.36 Å
α = 90°, β = 124.72°, γ = 90°
910.9
4
8 coordinate square antiprism
Except where otherwise noted, data are given for materials in their standard state (at 25 °C [77 °F], 100 kPa).

Californium polyborate is a covalent compound with formula Cf[B6O8(OH)5]. In this compound the californium is in a +3 oxidation state. This compound is the highest atomic number borate with a visible solid phase. Heavier elements than californium decay too fast to make macroscopic amounts of solid crystals. [1]

Contents

Californium polyborate is unusual in that californium is covalently bound to the borate. Californium was expected to resemble lanthanide elements in being highly ionic. The polyborate anion is polarisable and flexible. [2] The 5f, 6d, 7s, and 7p orbitals of californium are all involved on the bonding. [2] Most valence electrons are in the 5f orbital, and a significant fraction (23) in the 6d orbital, and smaller fractions of one electron are in the 7s and 7p orbitals. [1]

Formation

Californium(III) polyborate can be made by autoclaving a californium(III) chloride solution in water with excess boric acid for a week at 240°C. This is then cooled slowly to room temperature for another three days. Water dissolves excess boric acid to leave insoluble crystals of the borate. [1]

Properties

The californium(III) polyborate solid undergoes a green fluorescence of 525 nm with ultraviolet light of wavelengths 365 or 420 nm. [1] There is also an invisible near infrared fluorescence at 1020 nm induced by green light at 546 nm. [1]

Safety

Californium polyborate is dangerous because of the radioactivity of californium and its decay daughter curium. Between them these elements emit α particles, gamma rays and neutrons. [1]

Related Research Articles

The actinide or actinoid series encompasses at least the 14 metallic chemical elements in the 5f series, with atomic numbers from 89 to 102, actinium through nobelium. The actinide series derives its name from the first element in the series, actinium. The informal chemical symbol An is used in general discussions of actinide chemistry to refer to any actinide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Berkelium</span> Chemical element, symbol Bk and atomic number 97

Berkelium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Bk and atomic number 97. It is a member of the actinide and transuranium element series. It is named after the city of Berkeley, California, the location of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where it was discovered in December 1949. Berkelium was the fifth transuranium element discovered after neptunium, plutonium, curium and americium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Curium</span> Chemical element, symbol Cm and atomic number 96

Curium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Cm and atomic number 96. This transuranic actinide element was named after eminent scientists Marie and Pierre Curie, both known for their research on radioactivity. Curium was first intentionally made by the team of Glenn T. Seaborg, Ralph A. James, and Albert Ghiorso in 1944, using the cyclotron at Berkeley. They bombarded the newly discovered element plutonium with alpha particles. This was then sent to the Metallurgical Laboratory at University of Chicago where a tiny sample of curium was eventually separated and identified. The discovery was kept secret until after the end of World War II. The news was released to the public in November 1947. Most curium is produced by bombarding uranium or plutonium with neutrons in nuclear reactors – one tonne of spent nuclear fuel contains ~20 grams of curium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Californium</span> Chemical element, symbol Cf and atomic number 98

Californium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Cf and atomic number 98. The element was first synthesized in 1950 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, by bombarding curium with alpha particles. It is an actinide element, the sixth transuranium element to be synthesized, and has the second-highest atomic mass of all elements that have been produced in amounts large enough to see with the naked eye. The element was named after the university and the U.S. state of California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ionic bonding</span> Chemical bonding involving attraction between ions

Ionic bonding is a type of chemical bonding that involves the electrostatic attraction between oppositely charged ions, or between two atoms with sharply different electronegativities, and is the primary interaction occurring in ionic compounds. It is one of the main types of bonding, along with covalent bonding and metallic bonding. Ions are atoms with an electrostatic charge. Atoms that gain electrons make negatively charged ions. Atoms that lose electrons make positively charged ions. This transfer of electrons is known as electrovalence in contrast to covalence. In the simplest case, the cation is a metal atom and the anion is a nonmetal atom, but these ions can be more complex, e.g. molecular ions like NH+
4
or SO2−
4
. In simpler words, an ionic bond results from the transfer of electrons from a metal to a non-metal to obtain a full valence shell for both atoms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ligand</span> Ion or molecule that binds to a central metal atom to form a coordination complex

In coordination chemistry, a ligand is an ion or molecule with a functional group that binds to a central metal atom to form a coordination complex. The bonding with the metal generally involves formal donation of one or more of the ligand's electron pairs, often through Lewis bases. The nature of metal–ligand bonding can range from covalent to ionic. Furthermore, the metal–ligand bond order can range from one to three. Ligands are viewed as Lewis bases, although rare cases are known to involve Lewis acidic "ligands".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neptunium</span> Chemical element, symbol Np and atomic number 93

Neptunium is a chemical element; it has symbol Np and atomic number 93. A radioactive actinide metal, neptunium is the first transuranic element. Its position in the periodic table just after uranium, named after the planet Uranus, led to it being named after Neptune, the next planet beyond Uranus. A neptunium atom has 93 protons and 93 electrons, of which seven are valence electrons. Neptunium metal is silvery and tarnishes when exposed to air. The element occurs in three allotropic forms and it normally exhibits five oxidation states, ranging from +3 to +7. Like all actinides, it is radioactive, poisonous, pyrophoric, and capable of accumulating in bones, which makes the handling of neptunium dangerous.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nobelium</span> Chemical element, symbol No and atomic number 102

Nobelium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol No and atomic number 102. It is named in honor of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and benefactor of science. A radioactive metal, it is the tenth transuranic element and is the penultimate member of the actinide series. Like all elements with atomic number over 100, nobelium can only be produced in particle accelerators by bombarding lighter elements with charged particles. A total of twelve nobelium isotopes are known to exist; the most stable is 259No with a half-life of 58 minutes, but the shorter-lived 255No is most commonly used in chemistry because it can be produced on a larger scale.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Periodic table</span> Tabular arrangement of the chemical elements ordered by atomic number

The periodic table, also known as the periodic table of the elements, is an ordered arrangement of the chemical elements into rows ("periods") and columns ("groups"). It is an icon of chemistry and is widely used in physics and other sciences. It is a depiction of the periodic law, which states that when the elements are arranged in order of their atomic numbers an approximate recurrence of their properties is evident. The table is divided into four roughly rectangular areas called blocks. Elements in the same group tend to show similar chemical characteristics.

In chemistry, a transition metal is a chemical element in the d-block of the periodic table, though the elements of group 12 are sometimes excluded. The lanthanide and actinide elements are called inner transition metals and are sometimes considered to be transition metals as well.

A borate is any of a range of boron oxyanions, anions containing boron and oxygen, such as orthoborate BO3−3, metaborate BO−2, or tetraborate B4O2−7; or any salt of such anions, such as sodium metaborate, Na+[BO2] and borax (Na+)2[B4O7]2−. The name also refers to esters of such anions, such as trimethyl borate B(OCH3)3 but they are alkoxides.

Tennessine is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Ts and atomic number 117. It has the second-highest atomic number and joint-highest atomic mass of all known elements, and is the penultimate element of the 7th period of the periodic table.

A period 7 element is one of the chemical elements in the seventh row of the periodic table of the chemical elements. The periodic table is laid out in rows to illustrate recurring (periodic) trends in the chemical behavior of the elements as their atomic number increases: a new row is begun when chemical behavior begins to repeat, meaning that elements with similar behavior fall into the same vertical columns. The seventh period contains 32 elements, tied for the most with period 6, beginning with francium and ending with oganesson, the heaviest element currently discovered. As a rule, period 7 elements fill their 7s shells first, then their 5f, 6d, and 7p shells in that order, but there are exceptions, such as uranium.

Chemistry is the physical science concerned with the composition, structure, and properties of matter, as well as the changes it undergoes during chemical reactions.

This glossary of chemistry terms is a list of terms and definitions relevant to chemistry, including chemical laws, diagrams and formulae, laboratory tools, glassware, and equipment. Chemistry is a physical science concerned with the composition, structure, and properties of matter, as well as the changes it undergoes during chemical reactions; it features an extensive vocabulary and a significant amount of jargon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Californium compounds</span>

Few compounds of californium have been made and studied. The only californium ion that is stable in aqueous solutions is the californium(III) cation. The other two oxidation states are IV (strong oxidizing agents) and II (strong reducing agents). The element forms a water-soluble chloride, nitrate, perchlorate, and sulfate and is precipitated as a fluoride, oxalate or hydroxide. If problems of availability of the element could be overcome, then CfBr2 and CfI2 would likely be stable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Berkelium compounds</span> Chemical compounds

Berkelium forms a number of chemical compounds, where it normally exists in an oxidation state of +3 or +4, and behaves similarly to its lanthanide analogue, terbium. Like all actinides, berkelium easily dissolves in various aqueous inorganic acids, liberating gaseous hydrogen and converting into the trivalent oxidation state. This trivalent state is the most stable, especially in aqueous solutions, but tetravalent berkelium compounds are also known. The existence of divalent berkelium salts is uncertain and has only been reported in mixed lanthanum chloride-strontium chloride melts. Aqueous solutions of Bk3+ ions are green in most acids. The color of the Bk4+ ions is yellow in hydrochloric acid and orange-yellow in sulfuric acid. Berkelium does not react rapidly with oxygen at room temperature, possibly due to the formation of a protective oxide surface layer; however, it reacts with molten metals, hydrogen, halogens, chalcogens and pnictogens to form various binary compounds. Berkelium can also form several organometallic compounds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Actinocene</span> Class of chemical compounds

Actinocenes are a family of organoactinide compounds consisting of metallocenes containing elements from the actinide series. They typically have a sandwich structure with two dianionic cyclooctatetraenyl ligands (COT2-, which is C
8
H2−
8
) bound to an actinide-metal center (An) in the oxidation state IV, resulting in the general formula An(C8H8)2.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thorium compounds</span> Chemical compounds

Many compounds of thorium are known: this is because thorium and uranium are the most stable and accessible actinides and are the only actinides that can be studied safely and legally in bulk in a normal laboratory. As such, they have the best-known chemistry of the actinides, along with that of plutonium, as the self-heating and radiation from them is not enough to cause radiolysis of chemical bonds as it is for the other actinides. While the later actinides from americium onwards are predominantly trivalent and behave more similarly to the corresponding lanthanides, as one would expect from periodic trends, the early actinides up to plutonium have relativistically destabilised and hence delocalised 5f and 6d electrons that participate in chemistry in a similar way to the early transition metals of group 3 through 8: thus, all their valence electrons can participate in chemical reactions, although this is not common for neptunium and plutonium.

Einsteinium compounds are compounds that contain the element einsteinium (Es). These compounds largely have einsteinium in the +3 oxidation state, or in some cases in the +2 and +4 oxidation states. Although einsteinium is relatively stable, with half-lives ranging from 20 days upwards, these compounds have not been studied in great detail.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Polinski, Matthew J.; Garner, Edward B.; Maurice, Rémi; Planas, Nora; Stritzinger, Jared T.; Parker, T. Gannon; Cross, Justin N.; Green, Thomas D.; Alekseev, Evgeny V.; Van Cleve, Shelley M.; Depmeier, Wulf; Gagliardi, Laura; Shatruk, Michael; Knappenberger, Kenneth L.; Liu, Guokui; Skanthakumar, S.; Soderholm, Lynda; Dixon, David A.; Albrecht-Schmitt, Thomas E. (23 March 2014). "Unusual structure, bonding and properties in a californium borate". Nature Chemistry. 6 (5): 387–392. Bibcode:2014NatCh...6..387P. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.711.6947 . doi:10.1038/nchem.1896. PMID   24755589. S2CID   104331283.
  2. 1 2 "Unusual structure, bonding, and properties may provide a new possibility for a californium borate". 1 June 2015. Retrieved 29 July 2015.