Disordered Crystal Structure and Anomalously High Solubility of Radium Carbonate

[Image: see text] Radium-226 carbonate was synthesized from radium–barium sulfate ((226)Ra(0.76)Ba(0.24)SO(4)) at room temperature and characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) techniques. XRPD revealed that fractional crystallization occurred and that two phases were formed—the major Ra-rich phase, Ra(Ba)CO(3), and a minor Ba-rich phase, Ba(Ra)CO(3), crystallizing in the orthorhombic space group Pnma (no. 62) that is isostructural with witherite (BaCO(3)) but with slightly larger unit cell dimensions. Direct-space ab initio modeling shows that the carbonate oxygens in the major Ra(Ba)CO(3) phase are highly disordered. The solubility of the synthesized major Ra(Ba)CO(3) phase was studied from under- and oversaturation at 25.1 °C as a function of ionic strength using NaCl as the supporting electrolyte. It was found that the decimal logarithm of the solubility product of Ra(Ba)CO(3) at zero ionic strength (log(10)K(sp)(0)) is −7.5(1) (2σ) (s = 0.05 g·L(–1)). This is significantly higher than the log(10)K(sp)(0) of witherite of −8.56 (s = 0.01 g·L(–1)), supporting the disordered nature of the major Ra(Ba)CO(3) phase. The limited co-precipitation of Ra(2+) within witherite, the significantly higher solubility of pure RaCO(3) compared to witherite, and thermodynamic modeling show that the results obtained in this work for the major Ra(Ba)CO(3) phase are also applicable to pure RaCO(3). The refinement of the EXAFS data reveals that radium is coordinated by nine oxygens in a broad bond distance distribution with a mean Ra–O bond distance of 2.885(3) Å (1σ). The Ra–O bond distance gives an ionic radius of Ra(2+) in a 9-fold coordination of 1.545(6) Å (1σ).