Abstract

Rare earth and actinide elements (collectively f-elements) are indispensable for technology, healthcare, and energy infrastructure. Their use demands a profound understanding of their fundamental chemistry. Molecular chemistry has unveiled new insights into the range of oxidation states accessible with these elements, revealing that their bonding operates in a unique regime and that they exhibit remarkable magnetic and spectroscopic properties. Conventionally, low oxidation state (divalent, M²⁺) f-elements possess electron configurations with only f-electrons, fⁿ⁺¹. It is now recognized that certain molecular architectures support complexes of divalent f-elements where the configuration is best described as fⁿ d¹ – that is, that f-elements have accessible d-orbitals which can be populated. The range of structural and electronic features dictating these configurations is yet to be fully elucidated, and current theoretical frameworks and predictions have yet to be verified experimentally. In this lecture a series, work will be presented showing that the properties of these M²⁺ ions are not trivially determined or predicted, and that rare earth chemistry is not always a good surrogate for actinide chemistry in this realm.

Biography

Dr Conrad Goodwin is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Manchester (UK). He obtained his PhD with Prof. David P. Mills at The University of Manchester (2017), which was followed by a short postdoctoral fellowship in the same group and worked on record-breaking single-molecule magnets. In 2018, he moved to Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA) where he held a J. Robert Oppenheimer Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship and worked on the chemistry of transuranium elements from neptunium to californium. The Goodwin Group was established in 2021, and focuses on the coordination and redox chemistry of rare earth and actinide elements.