| The development of new and the application of existing methods for optical characterization of lanthanide and actinide ions in solution is described. Chapter 1 focuses on probing the energy levels of trivalent lanthanide ions in condensed aqueous and non-aqueous media. Cavity ring-down and thermal lensing spectrometers were developed to study the trivalent ytterbium ion at concentrations well-below those previously reported in the literature. Chapter 2 provides a historical background for uranyl ion speciation and introduces Raman scattering, the technique used in Chapter 3 to characterize the aqueous uranyl-histidine system in solution along with optical absorption, luminescence, and VMinteq calculations. |
