The Heat of Formation of the Uranyl Dication: Theoretical Evaluation Based on Relativistic Density Functional Calculations

Uranyl Solvation by a Three-Dimensional Reference Interaction Site Model

We report an implementation of the three-dimensional reference interaction site model (3D RISM) that in particular addresses the treatment of the long-range Coulomb field of charged species, represented by point charges and/or a distributed charge density. A comparison of 1D and 3D results for atomic ions demonstrates a reasonable accuracy, even for a moderate size of the unit cell and a moderate grid resolution. In an application to uranyl complexes with 4-6 explicit aqua ligands and an implicit bulk solvent modeled by RISM, we show that the 3D technique is not susceptible to the deficiencies of the 1D technique exposed in our previous work [Li, Matveev, Krüger, Rösch, Comp. Theor. Chem. 2015, 1051, 151]. The 3D method eliminates the artificial superposition of explicit aqua ligands and the RISM medium and predicts essentially the same values for uranyl and uranyl-water bond lengths as a state-of-the-art polarizable continuum model. With the first solvation shell treated explicitly, the observables are nearly independent of the order of the closure relationship used when solving the set of integral equations for the various distribution functions. Furthermore, we calculated the activation barrier of water exchange with a hybrid approach that combines the 3D RISM model for the bulk aqueous solvent and a quantum mechanical description (at the level of electronic density functional theory) of uranyl interacting with explicitly represented water molecules. The calculated result agrees very well with experiment and the best theoretical estimates.

Structures, spectroscopic and thermodynamic properties of U₂On (n = 0 ∼ 2, 4) molecules: a density functional theory study

The equilibrium structures, spectroscopic and thermodynamic parameters [entropy (S), internal energy (E), heat capacity (C p)] of U₂, U₂O, U₂O₂ and U₂O₄ uranium oxide molecules were investigated systematically using density functional theory (DFT). Our computations indicated that the ground electronic state of U₂ is the septet state and the equilibrium bond length is 2.194 Å; the ground electronic state of U₂O and U₂O₂ were found to be X³Φ and X³Σ(g) with stable C(∞v) and D(∞h) linear structures, respectively. The bridge-bonded structure with D(2h) symmetry and X³B₁(g) state is the most stable configuration for the U₂O₄ molecule. Mulliken population analyses show that U atoms always lose electrons to become the donor and O atoms always obtain electrons as the acceptor. Molecular orbital analyses demonstrated that the frontier orbitals of the title molecules were contributed mostly by 5f atomic orbitals of U atoms. Vibrational frequencies analyses indicate that the maximum absorption peaks stem from the stretching mode of U-O bonds in U₂O, U₂O₂ and U₂O₄. In addition, thermodynamic data of U₂O(n) (n = 0 ∼ 4) molecules at elevated temperatures of 293.0 K to 393.0 K was predicted.

The heat of formation of gaseous PuO22+from relativistic density functional calculations

Using a set of model reactions, we estimated the heat of formation of gaseous PuO2(2+) from quantum-chemical reaction enthalpies and experimental heats of formation of reference species. To this end, we carried out relativistic density functional calculations on the molecules PuO(2)2+, PuO2, PuF6, and PuF4. We used a revised variant (PBEN) of the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof gradient-corrected exchange-correlation functional, and we accounted for spin-orbit interaction in a self-consistent fashion. As open-shell Pu species with two or more unpaired 5f electrons are involved, spin-orbit interaction significantly affects the energies of the model reactions. Our theoretical estimate for the heat of formation DeltafH degree 0(PuO2(2+),g), 418+/-15 kcal mol-1, evaluated using plutonium fluorides as references, is in good agreement with a recent experimental result, 413+/-16 kcal mol-1. The theoretical value connected to the experimental heat of formation of PuO2(g) has a notably higher uncertainty and therefore was not included in the final result.