Chemists have spent over a hundred years trying to make ambient temperature/pressure catalytic systems that can convert atmospheric dinitrogen into ammonia or directly into amines. A handful of successful d-block metal catalysts have been developed in recent years, but even binding of dinitrogen to an f-block metal cation is extremely rare. Here we report f-block complexes that can catalyse the reduction and functionalization of molecular dinitrogen, including the catalytic conversion of molecular dinitrogen to a secondary silylamine. Simple bridging ligands assemble two actinide metal cations into narrow dinuclear metallacycles that can trap the diatom while electrons from an externally bound group 1 metal, and protons or silanes, are added, enabling dinitrogen to be functionalized with modest but catalytic yields of six equivalents of secondary silylamine per molecule at ambient temperature and pressure.

中文翻译：

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用于将二氮转化为氨和仲胺的金属环锕系元素催化剂。

化学家们花了一百多年的时间试图制造可以将大气中的二氮转化为氨或直接转化为胺的环境温度/压力催化系统。近年来已经开发了一些成功的 d-block 金属催化剂，但即使是二氮与 f-block 金属阳离子的结合也极为罕见。在这里，我们报告了可以催化分子二氮的还原和功能化的 f 嵌段配合物，包括将分子二氮催化转化为仲甲硅烷胺。简单的桥连配体将两个锕系金属阳离子组装成窄的双核金属环，可以捕获硅藻，同时添加来自外部结合的第 1 族金属的电子，以及质子或硅烷，