NMR studies of actinide oxides – A review

In this paper, we offer a brief review of the ground-state properties of the cubic oxides AnO2, where An = U , Np, Pu and Am, as revealed mainly by NMR studies of the 17O2− ligand. For PuO2, where the ground state is a nonmagnetic singlet eigenstate of the cubic crystal field, only the 239Pu has been studied, in a recent breakthrough observation of this elusive isotope [1]. For UO2 and NpO2, the former has an exotic four-sublattice antiferromagnetic (AFM) ground state, while the latter has the first multipolar ground state to be identified among actinide compounds, namely a mixture of octupolar and rank 5 (triakontadipolar) order. On the other hand AmO2, even with the longest-lived isotope 243Am, becomes disordered so quickly from radiation self-damage that its ground state in a recent study was simply a spin glass, while the actual ground state of the cubic crystalline compound remains obscured by this experimental problem. The emphasis throughout is on how 17O NMR studies complement other experimental data to confirm and verify the known exotic magnetic ground states of AnO2 systems.