Researchers from the University of Notre Dame and Argonne National
Laboratory have discovered a new class of materials that may provide
a better understanding of how radioactive materials behave in
the environment.
"No one has ever seen anything like these," says Peter Burns,
chairman of Notre Dame's Department of Civil Engineering and Geological
Sciences. Called actinyl peroxide compounds, the materials self-assemble
into unbelievably small hollow cages that could have useful new
electronic, magnetic and structural properties important to the
emerging world of nanotechnology.
The new materials form from uranium and neptunium-peroxide solutions
at room temperature. They consist of groups of 24, 28 or 32 identical
polyhedra that are linked into clusters measuring about two nanometers
-- billionths of a meter -- in diameter.
Burns and his Argonne Lab colleague, Lynda Soderholm, believe
that these actinyl nanospheres may form in alkaline mixtures of
nuclear waste, such as at the high-level nuclear waste tanks found
at Hanford, Washington, the site of nine nuclear reactors. Knowledge
of the new material is especially important for the Yucca Mountain
repository (see accompanying interview).
Burns and Soderholm plan to focus on the self-assembling aspect
of these materials. Reproducible, self-assembling nanostructures
are the current Holy Grail in the nanotechnology world. When they
can be manufactured, industry hopes to use them as catalysts,
computer chips, solar cells, flexible batteries and data storage
devices.
(July 2005)
