As I watch US researchers respond to threats against science, I’m reminded of when scientists in Brazil navigated a similar storm.

Superatoms are metal clusters that collectively behave like an atom, but they usually require metal–metal bonding and thus they are based on main group or transition metals. Now it has been shown that...

Nature Chemistry - The most common oxidation state for lanthanide elements is +3, and, beyond cerium, examples of these elements exhibiting higher oxidation states remain scarce. Now, a molecular...

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A landmark study reporting the discovery of Australopithecus africanus one century ago put the African continent at the centre of the story of humanity.

While several ligand systems support uranium across a range of oxidation states, spanning more than two oxidation states in a conserved coordination geometry is uncommon among structurally authenticated complexes. Imidophosphorane ligands significantly stabilize high-valent lanthanide and actinide complexes. Here, we report a series of homoleptic uranium imidophosphorane complexes, spanning the +4, +5 and +6 oxidation states in a four-coordinate pseudotetrahedral ligand field. The +6 oxidation state is accessible using a mild ferrocenium oxidant, yielding a rare example of U6+ in a pseudotetrahedral coordination environment. As the formal oxidation state increases, the U–N distances gradually contract, consistent with the Shannon ionic radii of U4+/5+/6+. Compared to reported complexes, the short U–N distances observed in the U6+ complex are more comparable to dianionic imido ligands than monoanionic amido ligands.