π bond without σ bond... Super long metal–metal bond in a fullerene cage... Those are some of the surprising findings of a study published recently in ACS Inorganic Chemistry by Adam Jaroš and Michal Straka from IOCB Prague with Cina Foroutan-Nejad from the Masaryk University (Brno).
The researchers investigated bonding in endohedral metallofullerenes An2@C70, An2@C80, and An2@C90 for actinides An ranging from thorium to curium.
They showed that most of the systems feature one or several one-electron two-center actinide–actinide bonds. Plutonium systems are the most interesting ones. The Pu2@C70 features a banana-shaped Pu–Pu bond, while Pu2@C80 features two Pu–Pu π bonds without corresponding σ bond. In Pu2@C90, the theory predicts a record-breaking metal–metal bond at a distance of 5.93 Å.
The studied compounds enrich the rather rare family of actinide–actinide bonds.
Read the paper:
- Adam Jaroš, Cina Foroutan-Nejad, and Michal Straka. From π Bonds without σ Bonds to the Longest Metal–Metal Bond Ever: A Survey on Actinide–Actinide Bonding in Fullerenes. Inorg. Chem. 2020, 59, 12608−12615. http://doi.org/10.1021/acs.inorgchem.0c01713
