EU funds for the man from UNCLE

Thursday, 19 November 2009

A UK researcher has won €1 million ($1.5 million) of European Union funding to support his research into fundamental molecular uranium chemistry.

Steve Liddle's project, titled Uranium in Non-Conventional Ligand Environments (UNCLE), is a recipient of a so-called Starting Grant from the recently established European Research Council. This was set up by the European Union as a funding body to support investigator-driven frontier research - that is, speculative and

"Uranium suffers    somewhat from negative PR"

ground-breaking research beyond the frontier of current knowledge. Starting grants are awarded through a competitive process to investigators who are in the early years of their careers (up to ten years after obtaining their PhD).

The award to Liddle, based at the University of Nottingham, will be used to support new projects and ideas for fundamental molecular uranium chemistry by developing new compounds containing uranium-metal bonds, assessing their intrinsic reactivity patterns, defining structure-bonding relationships, and developing a better understanding of actinide chemical bonding from an integrated experimental and theoretical approach.

"Uranium suffers somewhat from negative PR", according to Liddle. However, complexes of uranium-238 (the most common isotope, and more common still in depleted uranium) have great potential to lead to new catalysts, nuclear waste separation technologies and useful applications for depleted uranium. Liddle's project will also provide valuable knowledge about actinide chemistry, one of the least understood sections of the periodic table. Earlier this year, Liddle's research team made the first so-called 'naked' uranium-transition metal bonds between uranium and rhenium, providing vital evidence that valence orbitals can play a role in actinide bonding.

Steve Liddle can be seen enthusing about uranium, as well as handling samples of depleted uranium and uranium compounds, on Nottingham University School of Chemistry's website of videos of the periodic table.