Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Publication Date

10-20-2023

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-023-42165-x

PMID

37863887

PMCID

PMC10589252

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

10-20-2023

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Post-print

Abstract

Understanding metal-metal bonding involving f-block elements has been a challenging goal in chemistry. Here we report a series of mixed-valence di-metallofullerenes, ThDy@C2n (2n = 72, 76, 78, and 80) and ThY@C2n (2n = 72 and 78), which feature single electron actinide-lanthanide metal-metal bonds, characterized by structural, spectroscopic and computational methods. Crystallographic characterization unambiguously confirmed that Th and Y or Dy are encapsulated inside variably sized fullerene carbon cages. The ESR study of ThY@D3h(5)-C78 shows a doublet as expected for an unpaired electron interacting with Y, and a SQUID magnetometric study of ThDy@D3h(5)-C78 reveals a high-spin ground state for the whole molecule. Theoretical studies further confirm the presence of a single-electron bonding interaction between Y or Dy and Th, due to a significant overlap between hybrid spd orbitals of the two metals.

Keywords

Chemical bonding, Carbon nanotubes and fullerenes, Chemical bonding

Published Open-Access

yes

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