Perspectives on a quarter century of theoretical actinide chemistry

NUCL 14

Bruce E. Bursten, bbursten@utk.edu, Department of Chemistry, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-1600
The inorganic chemistry of the actinide elements has developed rapidly over the last 25 years, offering tremendous opportunities for expanding our understanding of structure and bonding in the f-elements. Applying quantum chemical methods to the actinides poses many challenges because of the size of the systems involved, the presence of f orbitals, the number of electrons involved, and the need to incorporate relativistic effects. In this paper, the author will present an historical perspective of his group's studies in this area, starting with the quasirelativistic Xα-SW method and progressing to modern relativistic density functional methods, will be presented. Inorganic bonding motifs will be applied to several types of complexes of the actinide elements, including large organometallic compounds and small matrix-isolated molecules, and actinide ions in solution.