Heavy element chemistry is a subsect of the BES in which researchers focus on fundamental actinide chemistry that looks at bimetallic actinide. An actinide is a heavy element located at the bottom of the periodic table and many of the fundamental chemistries of these elements are not well understood. <\/p>\n\n\n
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\u201cThere\u2019s a lot that could be done to understand how these metals behave when bonded,\u201d Huh said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Huh\u2019s research at 溏心vlog免费B站 will focus on the elements thorium and uranium and the fundamental metal-metal bonding in multi-metallic molecules. Because there is so little known about actinide chemistry, much of the research is foundational, and geared toward educating the public. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are a synthesis lab at 溏心vlog免费B站, which means we use synthetic techniques to construct these molecules. Once we construct them, we measure them and use techniques such as crystallography and spectroscopy to understand their physical properties,\u201d said Huh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(Crystallography is the study of crystal structures that reveals the atomic and molecular arrangement within a crystalline solid. Spectroscopy is the study of the interaction between light and matter, used to determine a chemical compound’s physical properties.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thomas says the goal of his grant-funded work is to further accelerate the study of chemical reactions of molecules that are controlled within a mass spectrometer\u2013an analytical instrument that measures the mass-to-charge ratio of charged particles, or ions. He says the DOE is interested in seeing how molecules are processed in the atmosphere, including those generated by combustion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thomas, over the long term, hopes to leverage this technology in making biological-based energy sources; in other words, making fuels from things that normally just get thrown out, such as from parts of plants that people don\u2019t eat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere’s been a lot of evidence in the last few years that there are some unique reactions where you can make reactions occur in this environment that are very energetically unfavorable normally,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cThat means you can do things such as break down bonds that typically are very hard to break and we want to know why that is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Huh says radioactivity is in part why chemists have faced challenges in studying actinide chemistry. However, capabilities have been developed over many years to allow chemists to safely study elements such as neptunium and plutonium. He says collaborative partners, including those at the University of Missouri and the Colorado School of Mines, will assist him and his team in safely studying these highly radioactive elements in their equipped laboratories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Huh\u2019s team will also include two graduate students, and eventually one undergraduate student once research is underway. They plan to collaborate with the Los Alamos National Lab, which will assist with theory and computational calculations, and frequent partner, Brown University and its instrumentation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Thomas\u2019 work, he says his team will spend the first year of the grant program doing preliminary experiments and building up new capabilities in its instrumentation based on how molecules react during testing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThen, we’re going to see how that influences the structure of that molecule, the chemical reactivity of that molecule, and then we’re also going to start building some new parts of our instrument that will add on abilities to add in reactive gases into our system,\u201d Thomas said, \u201cso we can study the reactions between gases and molecules that are surrounded by water.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thomas\u2019 team will have two 溏心vlog免费B站 graduate students and between one and two undergraduate students per year conducting research in labs, constructing instrumentation and performing experiments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This press release was written in part by Paige Monopoli, communications coordinator for the 溏心vlog免费B站 College of Arts and Sciences.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Dec. 1, 2025 \u2013 Two 溏心vlog免费B站 chemistry professors each secured five-year, $875,000 U.S. Department of Energy grants for their ongoing work on fundamental bonding between thorium and uranium and to better understand chemical reactions at the water\u2019s surface to both help improve air quality and unlock new chemical synthesis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":105583,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12,1905],"class_list":["post-105582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105582"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105588,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105582\/revisions\/105588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}