Immobilization of radioactive iodine in silver aluminophosphate glasses.

Silver aluminophosphate glasses have been investigated as matrices for the immobilization of radioactive iodine. In this study, up to 28mol% AgI have been incorporated without volatilization thanks to a low temperature synthesis protocol. Alumina was added in the composition in order to increase the glass transition temperature for a better thermal stability in a repository conditions. Two series of glasses have been investigated, based on AgPO3 and Ag5P3O10 compositions, and with 0-5mol% Al2O3. We report (31)P, (27)Al and (109)Ag NMR study of these glasses, including advanced measurement of the connectivities through {(27)Al}-(31)P cross-polarization and (31)P-(31)P double-quantum correlation. We confirm that AgI is inserted in the aluminophosphate glasses and does not form clusters. AgI does not induce any modification of the glass polymerization but only an expansion of the network. Despite no evidence for crystallization could be obtained from XRD, NMR revealed that the introduction of AgI induces an exclusion of alumina from the network, leading to the crystallization of aluminophosphate phases such as Al(PO3)3 or AlPO4. As a consequence, despite NMR gives evidence for the presence of aluminophosphate bonds, only a limited effect of alumina addition on thermal properties is observed.

Probing spin density and local structure in the Prussian blue analogues CsCd[Fe/Co(CN)6]·0.5H2O and Cd3[Fe/Co(CN)6]2·15H2O with solid-state MAS NMR spectroscopy.

Magic-angle spinning (MAS) NMR spectroscopy is used to study the local structure and spin delocalisation in Prussian blue analogues (PBAs). We selected two common archetypes of PBAs (A(I)M(II)[M(III)(CN)(6)]·xH(2)O and M(II)(3)[M(III)(CN)(6)](2)·xH(2)O, in which A(I) is an alkali ion, and M(II) and M(III) are transition-metal ions) that exhibit similar cubic frameworks but different microscopic structures. Whereas the first type of PBA contains interstitial alkali ions and does not exhibit any [M(III)(CN)(6)](3-) vacancies, the second type of PBA exhibits [M(III)(CN)(6)](3-) vacancies, but does not contain inserted alkali ions. In this study, we selected Cd(II) as a divalent metal in order to use the (113)Cd nuclei (I=1/2) as a probe of the local structure. Here, we present a complete MAS NMR study on two series of PBAs of the formulas Cd(II)(3)[Fe(III)(x)Co(III)(1-x)(CN)(6)](2)·15H(2)O with x=0 (1), 0.25 (2), 0.5 (3), 0.75 (4) and 1 (5), and CsCd(II)[Fe(III)(x)Co(III)(1-x)(CN)(6)]·0.5H(2)O with x=0 (6), 0.25 (7), 0.5 (8), 0.75 (9) and 1 (10). Interestingly, the presence of Fe(III) magnetic centres in the vicinity of the cadmium sites has a magnifying-glass effect on the NMR spectrum: it induces a striking signal spread such that the resolution is notably improved compared to that achieved for the diamagnetic PBAs. By doping the sample with varying amounts of diamagnetic Co(III) and comparing the NMR spectra of both types of PBAs, we have been able to give a view of the structure which is complementary to that usually obtained from X-ray diffraction studies. In particular, this study has shown that the vacancies are not randomly distributed in the mesoporous PBAs. Moreover the cadmium chemical shift, which is a measure of the hyperfine coupling, allows the estimation of the spin density on the cadmium nucleus, and consequently, the elucidation of the spin delocalisation mechanism in these compounds along with its dependency on structural parameters.