Interactions of Trivalent Lanthanides and Actinides with Solid-Phase Extractants

摘要: The ability to successfully sequester and separate trivalent lanthanides and actinides has applications to the nuclear fuel cycle, processing of irradiated target materials, and nuclear forensics. The challenge in separating the trivalent lanthanides and actinides is their similar size and charge. As a result of this, standard size exclusion or ion exchange techniques become much more challenging. Instead of focusing on size or charge for separation, their differences in interactions with complexing ligands can be utilized. Another challenge in trivalent lanthanide and actinide separations is that these metals are often dissolved in highly acidic matrices. Thus, the stability of the extractant ligand used to complex the metal is at risk of degradation.