Thorium–phosphorus triamidoamine complexes containing Th–P single- and multiple-bond interactions

Elizabeth P. Wildman, Gábor Balázs, Ashley J. Wooles, Manfred Scheer () and Stephen T. Liddle ()
Additional contact information
Elizabeth P. Wildman: School of Chemistry, The University of Manchester
Gábor Balázs: Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Regensburg
Ashley J. Wooles: School of Chemistry, The University of Manchester
Manfred Scheer: Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Regensburg
Stephen T. Liddle: School of Chemistry, The University of Manchester

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Despite the burgeoning field of uranium-ligand multiple bonds, analogous complexes involving other actinides remain scarce. For thorium, under ambient conditions only a few multiple bonds to carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, selenium and tellurium are reported, and no multiple bonds to phosphorus are known, reflecting a general paucity of synthetic methodologies and also problems associated with stabilising these linkages at the large thorium ion. Here we report structurally authenticated examples of a parent thorium(IV)–phosphanide (Th–PH2), a terminal thorium(IV)–phosphinidene (Th=PH), a parent dithorium(IV)–phosphinidiide (Th–P(H)-Th) and a discrete actinide–phosphido complex under ambient conditions (Th=P=Th). Although thorium is traditionally considered to have dominant 6d-orbital contributions to its bonding, contrasting to majority 5f-orbital character for uranium, computational analyses suggests that the bonding of thorium can be more nuanced, in terms of 5f- versus 6d-orbital composition and also significant involvement of the 7s-orbital and how this affects the balance of 5f- versus 6d-orbital bonding character.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12884 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms12884

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12884

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().