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Heavy-element chemistry

Examining actinides with X-ray spectroscopy

Exploration of the coordination chemistry and electronic structure of the actinides is fundamental to understanding factors that govern their reactivity during chemical processing and their behaviour in the environment. Here, we show the recent progress in how X-ray spectroscopy has allowed us to look more closely to these properties.

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Fig. 1: Representations of the four X-ray spectroscopy techniques referenced in this work.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge M. R. Vejar, J. N. Wacker and R. J. Abergel for their feedback on this work. NextGen is supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development (NA-22) through the Nonproliferation Stewardship Program (NSP). This manuscript was assembled with support from the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Heavy Element Chemistry Program at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) under contract DE-AC02-05CH11231.

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Correspondence to Frances E. Zengotita or S. Olivia Gunther.

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Zengotita, F.E., Gunther, S.O. Examining actinides with X-ray spectroscopy. Nat Rev Chem 9, 8–9 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-024-00679-y

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