Revised ionic radii of lanthanoid(III) ions in aqueous solution.

A new set of ionic radii in aqueous solution has been derived for lanthanoid(III) cations starting from a very accurate experimental determination of the ion-water distances obtained from extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) data. At variance with previous results, a very regular trend has been obtained, as expected for this series of elements. A general procedure to compute ionic radii in solution by combining the EXAFS technique and molecular dynamics (MD) structural data has been developed. This method can be applied to other ions allowing one to determine ionic radii in solution with an accuracy comparable to that of the Shannon crystal ionic radii.