β-Technetium trichloride: formation, structure, and first-principles calculations

Frederic Poineau; Erik V Johnstone; Philippe F Weck; Paul M Forster; Eunja Kim; Kenneth R Czerwinski; Alfred P Sattelberger

doi:10.1021/ic300612k

β-Technetium trichloride: formation, structure, and first-principles calculations

Inorg Chem. 2012 May 7;51(9):4915-7. doi: 10.1021/ic300612k. Epub 2012 Apr 9.

Authors

Frederic Poineau¹, Erik V Johnstone, Philippe F Weck, Paul M Forster, Eunja Kim, Kenneth R Czerwinski, Alfred P Sattelberger

Affiliation

¹ Department of Chemistry, University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada 89154, USA. poineauf@unlv.nevada.edu

PMID: 22486315
DOI: 10.1021/ic300612k

Abstract

A second polymorph of technetium trichloride, β-TcCl(3), has been identified from the reaction between Tc metal and Cl(2) gas. The structure of β-TcCl(3) consists of infinite layers of edge-sharing octahedra, similar to its MoCl(3) and RuCl(3) analogues. The Tc-Tc distance [2.861(3) Å] between adjacent octahedra is indicative of metal-metal bonding. Earlier theoretical work predicted that β-TcCl(3) is less stable than α-TcCl(3). In agreement with the prediction, β-TcCl(3) slowly transforms into α-TcCl(3) (Tc(3)Cl(9)) over 16 days at 280 °C.