Another ’trophy’ for the chemistry cabinet

The search for cleaner, low temperature nuclear fuels has produced a shock result for a team of experts at The University of Nottingham. First they created a stable version of a 'trophy molecule' that has eluded scientists for decades. Now they have discovered that the bonding within this molecule is far different than expected. Remarkably their findings have shown that it behaves in much the same way as its counterparts in the well-known transitional metals such as chromium, molybdenum and tungsten. The research, done by PhD student David King, which could help in the extraction and separation of the two to three per cent of highly radioactive material in nuclear waste, was led by Professor Stephen Liddle in the School of Chemistry, and has been published in the prestigious academic. Professor Liddle said: "The major motivation for doing the first piece of research was to understand the nature of the chemical bonding of uranium. Now we have extended the series to enable meaningful comparisons the 'shock' is that whereas the bonding would be expected to be very different to commonly known and well understood transition metal analogues the bonding is in fact very similar.