How Does Bending the Uranyl Unit Influence Its Spectroscopy and Luminescence?
Hanna Oher, André Severo Pereira Gomes, Richard E. Wilson, David D. Schnaars, Valérie Vallet
Abstract
Bent uranyl complexes can be formed with chloride ligands and 1,10-phenanthroline (phen) ligands bound to the equatorial and axial planes of the uranyl(VI) moiety, as revealed by the crystal structures, IR and Raman spectroscopy, and quantum-chemical calculations. With the goal of probing the influence of chloride and phenanthroline coordination enforcing the bending on the absorption and emission spectra of this complex, spin–orbit time-dependent density functional theory calculations for the bare uranyl complexes as well as for the free UO 2 Cl 2 subunit and the UO 2 Cl 2 (phen) 2 complex were performed. The emission spectra have been fully simulated by ab initio methods and compared to experimental photoluminescence spectra, recorded for the first time for UO 2 Cl 2 (phen) 2 . Notably, the bending of uranyl in UO 2 Cl 2 and UO 2 Cl 2 (phen) 2 triggers excitations of the uranyl bending mode, yielding a denser luminescence spectrum.