Spectroscopic and Electrochemical Investigation of Uranium and Neptunium in Chloride Room-Temperature Ionic Liquids

To expand the breadth of knowledge of actinide chemistry in molten chloride salts, chloride room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) were used to probe the influence of RTIL cation on second-sphere coordination for anionic complexes of uranium and neptunium. Six chloride RTILs were studied to represent a range of cation polarizing strength, size, and charge density to correlate changes in the complex geometry and redox behaviors. Optical spectroscopy indicated that actinides were dissolved at equilibrium as octahedral AnCl6 2– (An = U, Np) as is observed in comparable high-temperature molten chloride salts. These anionic metal complexes were sensitive to the RTIL cation polarizing strength and hydrogen bond donating strength and displayed varying levels of fine structure and hypersensitive transition splitting depending on the degree of perturbation to the complex’s coordination symmetry. Furthermore, voltammetry experiments on the redox-active complexes indicated a stabilizing effect on lower valence actinide oxidation states by more polarizing RTIL cations whereby the measured E 1/2 potentials for both U­(IV/III) and Np­(IV/III) couples shifted positively by about 600 mV across the different systems. These results indicate that more polarizing RTIL cations inductively remove electron density from the actinide metal center over An–Cl–Cation bond networks to stabilize electron-deficient oxidation states. Electron-transfer kinetics were generally much slower than in molten chloride systems, partially due to lower temperatures and higher viscosities in the working systems and showed diffusion coefficients of 1.8 × 10–8 to 6.4 × 10–8 cm2 s–1 for UIV and 4.4 × 10–8 to 8.3 × 10–8 cm2 s–1 for NpIV. We also detect a one-electron oxidation of NpIV that we have attributed to the formation of NpV as NpCl6 –. Overall, we observe a coordination environment for the anionic actinide complexes that is susceptible to even small changes in RTIL cation properties.