The electronic structures of actinide systems are extremely complicated and pose considerable challenges both experimentally and theoretically because of significant electron correlation and relativistic effects. Here we report an investigation of the electronic structure and chemical bonding of uranium dioxides, UO2(-) and UO2, using photoelectron spectroscopy and relativistic quantum chemistry. The electron affinity of UO2 is measured to be 1.159(20) eV. Intense detachment bands are observed from the UO2(-) low-lying (7sσg)(2)(5fϕu)(1) orbitals and the more deeply bound O2p-based molecular orbitals which are separated by a large energy gap from the U-based orbitals. Surprisingly, numerous weak photodetachment transitions are observed in the gap region due to extensive two-electron transitions, suggesting strong electron correlations among the (7sσg)(2)(5fϕu)(1) electrons in UO2(-) and the (7sσg)(1)(5fϕu)(1) electrons in UO2. These observations are interpreted using multi-reference ab initio calculations with inclusion of spin-orbit coupling. The strong electron correlations and spin-orbit couplings generate orders-of-magnitude more detachment transitions from UO2(-) than expected on the basis of the Koopmans' theorem. The current experimental data on UO2(-) provide a long-sought opportunity to arbitrating various relativistic quantum chemistry methods aimed at handling systems with strong electron correlations.

Niobium-doped silicon clusters, NbSi (n = 3-12), were generated by laser vaporization and investigated by anion photoelectron spectroscopy. The structures and electronic properties of NbSi anions and their neutral counterparts were investigated with ab initio calculations and compared with the experimental results. It is found that the Nb atom in NbSi prefers to occupy the high coordination sites to form more Nb-Si bonds. The most stable structures of NbSi are all exohedral structures with the Nb atom face-capping the Si frameworks. At n = 8, both the anion and neutral adopt a boat-shaped structure and the openings of the boat-shaped structures remain unclosed in NbSi clusters. The most stable structure of the NbSi anion is endohedral, while that of neutral NbSi is exohedral. The global minima of both the NbSi anion and neutral NbSi are D symmetric hexagonal prisms with the Nb atom at the center. The perfect D symmetric hexagonal prism of NbSi is electronically stable as it obeys the 18-electron rule and has a shell-closed electronic structure with a large HOMO-LUMO gap of 2.70 eV. The molecular orbital analysis of NbSi suggests that the delocalized Nb-Si ligand interactions may contribute to the stability of the D symmetric hexagonal prism. The AdNDP analysis shows that the delocalized 2c-2e Si-Si bonds and multicenter-2e NbSi bonds are important for the structural stability of the NbSi anion.

M@Au12 cage molecules (M = transition element from group 6) are interesting clusters with high-symmetric structure and significant stability. As the heavier homologue of W is (106)Sg, it is interesting to pinpoint whether the Sg@Au12 cluster is also stable. Geometric and electronic structures and bonding of various Sg@Au12 isomers were investigated with density functional theory (PW91, PBE, B3LYP) and wave function theory (MP2, CCSD(T)) approaches. The lowest-energy isomer of Sg@Au12 has icosahedral symmetry with significant Sg(6d)-Au(6s) covalent-metallic interaction and is comparable to the lighter homologues (M = Mo, W), with similar binding energy, although Sg follows (as a rare case) the textbook rule "ns below (n - 1)d". The 12 6s valence electrons from Au12 and the six 7s6d ones from Sg can be viewed as an 18e system below and above the interacting Au 5d band, forming nine delocalized multicenter bond pairs with a high stability of ∼0.8 eV of bond energy per each of the 12 Sg-Au contacts. Different prescriptions (orbital, multipole-deformation, charge-partition, and X-ray-spectroscopy based ones) assign ambiguous atomic charges to the centric and peripheral atoms; atomic core-level energy shifts correspond to some negative charge shift to the gold periphery, more so for Cr@Au12 than for Sg@Au12 or Au@Au12.

Uranium oxide clusters UOx(-) (x = 3-5) were produced by laser vaporization and characterized by photoelectron spectroscopy and quantum theory. Photoelectron spectra were obtained for UOx(-) at various photon energies with well-resolved detachment transitions and vibrational resolution for x = 3 and 4. The electron affinities of UOx were measured as 1.12, 3.60, and 4.02 eV for x = 3, 4, and 5, respectively. The geometric and electronic structures of both the anions and the corresponding neutrals were investigated by quasi-relativistic electron-correlation quantum theory to interpret the photoelectron spectra and to provide insight into their chemical bonding. For UOx clusters with x ≤ 3, the O atoms appear as divalent closed-shell anions around the U atom, which is in various oxidation states from U(II)(fds)(4) in UO to U(VI)(fds)(0) in UO3. For x > 3, there are no longer sufficient valence electrons from the U atom to fill the O(2p) shell, resulting in fractionally charged and multicenter delocalized valence states for the O ligands as well as η(1)- or η(2)-bonded O2 units, with unusual spin couplings and complicated electron correlations in the unfilled poly oxo shell. The present work expands our understanding of both the bonding capacities of actinide elements with extended spdf valence shells as well as the multitude of oxygen's charge and bonding states.