Ab initio study on the reaction of uranium with oxygen

The primary reaction products and reaction mechanism of uranium with oxygen were discussed from MP2 method with the relativistic core potential of SDD basis set for U and 6-311+G* for O. The molecular geometries, electronic structure and energies of uranium oxides were obtained. The inspection on the three-dimensional potential energy surfaces of the U–O 2 interaction suggested that the abstraction and insertion mechanism were responsible for the studied reactions. The abstraction reaction channel resulting in the formation of UO and O is favored because the energy barrier is remarkably smaller than the one of the insertion channel resulting in the linear OUO product directly.