Determination of redox potential of mendelevium (Md)

Toyoshima, Atsushi; Li, Z.*; Asai, Masato  ; Sato, Nozomi; Sato, Tetsuya   ; Oe, Kazuhiro; Kikuchi, Takahiro; Kaneya, Yusuke*; Kitatsuji, Yoshihiro  ; Tsukada, Kazuaki  ; Nagame, Yuichiro ; Schdel, M.; Kasamatsu, Yoshitaka*; Kogama, Yuka*; Shinohara, Atsushi*; Haba, Hiromitsu*; Even, J.*

Redox potential of mendelevium (Md) was determined with flow electrolytic chromatography. Mendelevium-255 with a half-life of 27 min was produced in the Cm(B, 4) reaction at the JAEA tandem accelerator. Reaction products transported by a KCl/He gas-jet method were collected on a chemistry apparatus. After removing KCl with HDEHP column chromatography, elution behavior of Md in 0.10 M HCl was investigated with a flow electrolytic column apparatus at the applied potentials between -0.3 and -0.6 V vs. a Ag/AgCl reference electrode. At -0.3 V, elution behavior of Md was the same as that of Bk, showing that the stable Md was not reduced to the divalent state. At -0.6 V, elution of Md was quite similar to that of Sr, demonstrating that Md was successfully reduced to Md. From the behavior of Md against the applied potentials, we evaluated its redox potential to be -0.400.03 V.