Ringed Uranium

For this cover, I was inspired by an article that reports the team made a new kind of uranium compound where the metal sits between several ring-shaped carbon molecules, almost like a sandwich. They show that these compounds can actually be isolated and studied, which had not been done for this exact uranium setup before.

To figure out what they had made, they used several kinds of tests: crystal structure analysis, magnetic measurements, light absorption measurements, and computer calculations. Those tests showed that uranium is in the +4 oxidation state and that it forms real bonding interactions with the carbon rings, not just a loose attachment.

They showed that these uranium compounds help explain how uranium bonds to aromatic carbon rings and how that differs from similar compounds made with other metals. The work gives chemists a new platform for understanding uranium chemistry and how its 5f orbitals take part in bonding.