Abstract
The current status of gaseous transport studies of the singly-charged lanthanide and actinide ions is reviewed in light of potential applications to superheavy ions. The measurements and calculations for the mobility of lanthanide ions in He and Ar agree well, and they are remarkably sensitive to the electronic configuration of the ion, namely, whether the outer electronic shells are 6s, 5d6s or 6s2. The previous theoretical work is extended here to ions of the actinide family with zero electron orbital momentum: Ac+ (7s2, 1S), Am+ (5f77s 9S°), Cm+ (5f77s2 8S°), No+ (5f147s 2S), and Lr+ (5f147s2 1S). The calculations reveal large systematic differences in the mobilities of the 7s and 7s2 groups of ions and other similarities with their lanthanide analogs. The correlation of ion-neutral interaction potentials and mobility variations with spatial parameters of the electron distributions in the bare ions is explored through the ionic radii concept. While the qualitative trends found for interaction potentials and mobilities render them appealing for superheavy ion research, lack of experimental data and limitations of the scalar relativistic ab initio approaches in use make further efforts necessary to bring the transport measurements into the inventory of techniques operating in “one atom at a time” mode.
Highlights
While celebrating 1869 as the year of the Periodic Table’s discovery, one may recall other important milestones of its shaping toward the present form (Karol et al, 2016a,b)
To step into the actinide period, we extend the scalar relativistic ab initio approaches tested for lanthanides to compute ionatom interaction potentials for selected actinide ions
We show that the trends found for the lanthanides largely persist for the actinide family and can underlie experimental exploration of their transport and, in turn, electronic structure properties
Summary
While celebrating 1869 as the year of the Periodic Table’s discovery, one may recall other important milestones of its shaping toward the present form (Karol et al, 2016a,b). The field-induced drift discrimination of the ions in ground and excited electronic states (Kemper and Bowers, 1991; Bowers et al, 1993; Taylor et al, 1999; Iceman et al, 2007; Ibrahim et al, 2008; Manard and Kemper, 2016a,b), known as the electronicstate chromatography effect, is a direct consequence of the mobility variation with electronic configuration It has been proposed recently (Laatiaoui, 2019) that this effect can be used for spectroscopic investigation of heavy and superheavy ions.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
