Actinide-lanthanide single electron metal-metal bond formed in mixed-valence di-metallofullerenes.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37863887.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-42165-x and PMC identifier 10589252.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Understanding metal-metal bonding involving f-block elements has been a challenging goal in chemistry. Here we report a series of mixed-valence di-metallofullerenes, ThDy@C<sub>2n</sub> (2n = 72, 76, 78, and 80) and ThY@C<sub>2n</sub> (2n = 72 and 78), which feature single electron actinide-lanthanide metal-metal bonds, characterized by structural, spectroscopic and computational methods. Crystallographic characterization unambiguously confirmed that Th and Y or Dy are encapsulated inside variably sized fullerene carbon cages. The ESR study of ThY@D<sub>3h</sub>(5)-C<sub>78</sub> shows a doublet as expected for an unpaired electron interacting with Y, and a SQUID magnetometric study of ThDy@D<sub>3h</sub>(5)-C<sub>78</sub> reveals a high-spin ground state for the whole molecule. Theoretical studies further confirm the presence of a single-electron bonding interaction between Y or Dy and Th, due to a significant overlap between hybrid spd orbitals of the two metals.