Scientific Achievement
Foundry users, working with staff, performed spectroscopic and structural characterization of an einsteinium coordination complex.
Significance and Impact
New strategies developed to work with minute sample sizes of Es-254 reveal an intermediate spin-orbit coupling scheme and open the door to studying the fundamental coordination properties of the transplutonium actinides.
Research Details
- Element-specific characterization techniques, luminescence spectroscopy and X-ray absorption spectroscopy, were employed to characterize einsteinium (Es), using less than 200 ng of material.
- The energy of the L3 absorption edge and a bond distance for Es-254 were measured.
- Photophysical measurements revealed a hypsochromic shift upon metal complexation, opposite from what has been previously observed with other f-elements.
K.P. Carter, K. M. Shield, K.F. Smith, Z.R. Jones, J.N. Wacker, L. Arnedo-Sanchez, T.M. Mattox, L. M. Moreau, K. E. Knope, S. A. Kozimor, C.H. Booth, R.J. Abergel. Nature. 2021, 590, 85–88. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-03179-3
Read the news release on the first measurements of einsteinium.
