Researchers from Moscow, St. Petersburg and Dubna synthesized and described new compounds for the first time, which are the first representatives of the salts of rare earth elements and lactic acid. The results of the work were published in the journal RSC Advances.
Modern chemistry makes it possible to obtain a huge number of new compounds, and the truly endless combinations of building blocks from which they can be “assembled” make it an interesting and exciting task. Rare earth elements impart unique properties to substances, primarily luminescent and magnetic, and their biological activity is of no less interest. The chemistry of rare earth elements has been studied for many decades, so finding previously unknown compounds seems to be an impossible task. But it turned out that there is still a lot waiting for its discoverers! For example, the compounds of rare earth elements with lactic acid, which belongs to the so-called α-hydroxy acids, were predicted more than 50 years ago, but no one has been able to synthesize them in the form of individual compounds so far.
A team of scientists from the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry. NS. Kurnakov RAS, together with colleagues from the St. Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics NRC “Kurchatov Institute”, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russian University of Chemical Technology. DI. Mendeleev and the Laboratory of Neutron Physics. THEM. Frank of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research has synthesized a new crystalline yttrium lactate, as well as amorphous yttrium lactate, which has an extremely unusual structure.
“Many rare earth compounds exhibit biological activity and can be used to diagnose and treat various diseases. To understand the mechanism of such activity, it is necessary to know how ions of rare earth elements interact with organic substances involved in metabolism. One of these important substances is lactic acid, which is formed in the human body during the breakdown of glucose and is a marker of various disorders caused by hypoxia. Studies of the chemical interaction of rare earth elements with lactic acid were begun many years ago, but, oddly enough, no one has been able to obtain crystalline lactates before us. By the way, even less is known about the salts of rare-earth elements with other α-hydroxy acids. We proposed a synthesis strategy and were able to isolate crystals of the first salt of a rare earth element and lactic acid – yttrium lactate, – comments Aleksey Yapryntsev, a researcher at the Laboratory for the Synthesis of Functional Materials and Processing of Mineral Raw Materials of the Institute of General Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
It is interesting that if we slightly change the synthesis conditions we have proposed (reduce the amount of lactic acid), then you can get a substance similar in composition, which does not form crystals, but a gel consisting of the finest (about 30 nm) fibers. REE compounds rarely form gels, and fibrous gels have hardly been studied at all. When this gel is carefully dried, it forms a durable flexible material that resembles ordinary paper.
We believe that the compounds we have obtained open up possibilities for creating new luminescent test systems for the detection of organic compounds in air. New knowledge about the compounds of rare earth elements with organic compounds involved in metabolism is important for the creation of systems for monitoring the state of the human body. ” This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (No. 075-15-2020-782).
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