Non-scientist explanation of my paper:
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. #RealTimeChem #Chem #Chemistry #Science
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.
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.
