My first primary author paper has been published! http://doi.org/10.1039/C7DT00942A "Dicyanoaurate-based heterobimetallic uranyl coordination polymers" #RealTimeChem
@Canageek I just don't know most of those words.
But CONGRATULATIONS! Also is there a lay abstract or anything? Like why did you do this? Also, do you have pictures of beakers?
@susannah The building blocks I'm using are a gold compound known as "Dicyanoaurate" and a uranium compound known as uranyl.
Dicyanoaurate is a long stick made of gold and cyanide that links to other things at the ends. Uranyl is a stick as well, made of uranium and oxygen. However, it likes to attach to other things around its middle.
@susannah So I've combined these in a number of ways that haven't been done before, and this is interesting as there has been very little work in this area with uranium, and if we know enough about how uranium and other things like to stick together we can start designing useful materials made of these things.
@susannah Also, I did a very simple and interesting reaction that happens when you put uranyl in light with water around, and while this has been known for a long time, to do it on a useful scale you normally need to add some powerful chemicals, and I did it without those.
@susannah Non-scientist explanation:
Coordination polymers are a class of material where I take a couple of units and link them together into a larger structure. Think of lego, where I can take two different shapes and link them into a larger structure. In this case, I'm making long stacks of them, or chains. So think of me linking together a bunch of 2x2 green lego squares and 2x4 black lego rectangles.