Molecular structures and electrochemical plots of cerium, uranium, and neptunium. Credit: Julie E. Niklas, Georgia Institute of Technology Oxidation is the process where atoms lose electrons during a ...

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are breathing new life into the scientific understanding of neptunium, a unique, radioactive, metallic element—and a key ...

This week's element is neptunium, which has the atomic symbol Np and atomic number 93. Neptunium was named for the planet Neptune, the next planet away from the sun after Uranus (which was uranium's ...

Physicists have gained new insight into the origins of superconductivity -- a property of metals where electrical resistance vanishes -- by studying exotic chemical compounds that contain neptunium ...

Scientists first created the artificial element neptunium in 1940, around the time they made the first atoms of plutonium. But because plutonium turned out to be so much better for nuclear weapons, ...

Not much is known about the properties of neptunium, a highly radioactive man-made material that is a byproduct of nuclear reactors, except that it emits alpha, beta and gamma radioactivity. The ...

It’s difficult to make molecules using elements that lie beyond uranium on the periodic table, which has hampered progress in studying how actinides form bonds. Now chemists have expanded the library ...

Jim Ibers talks about neptunium, an element that has remained largely unnoticed despite the flurry of activity devoted to its neighbours in the periodic table, uranium and plutonium. The actinides, ...

Oxidation is the process where atoms lose electrons during a chemical reaction. Among the radioactive elements, neptunium and plutonium are much harder to oxidize than uranium. To study these elements ...