Plutonium(III) bromide is an

inorganic In chemistry, an inorganic compound is typically a chemical compound that lacks carbon–hydrogen bonds, that is, a compound that is not an organic compound. The study of inorganic compounds is a subfield of chemistry known as ''inorganic chemist ...

salt of

bromine Bromine is a chemical element with the symbol Br and atomic number 35. It is the third-lightest element in group 17 of the periodic table ( halogens) and is a volatile red-brown liquid at room temperature that evaporates readily to form a simi ...

and

plutonium Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibi ...

with the formula PuBr₃. This radioactive green solid has few uses, however its

crystal structure In crystallography, crystal structure is a description of the ordered arrangement of atoms, ions or molecules in a crystalline material. Ordered structures occur from the intrinsic nature of the constituent particles to form symmetric patterns ...

is often used as a structural archetype in crystallography.

Crystal structure

The PuBr₃ crystal structure was first published in 1948 by William Houlder Zachariasen. The compound forms orthorhombic crystals, a type of square antiprism, within which the Pu atoms adopt an 8-coordinate bicapped trigonal prismatic arrangement. Its Pearson symbol is oS16 with the corresponding space group No. 63 (in International Union of Crystallography classification) or Cmcm (in

Hermann–Mauguin notation In geometry, Hermann–Mauguin notation is used to represent the symmetry elements in point groups, plane groups and space groups. It is named after the German crystallographer Carl Hermann (who introduced it in 1928) and the French mineralogis ...

). The majority of trivalent chloride and bromide salts of lanthanide and actinides crystallise in the PuBr₃ structure.

References

{{Plutonium compounds Plutonium(III) compounds Actinide halides Crystal structure types