Conformation and hydration of actinide-selective SO3-Ph-BTP ligand was studied computationally.
The combined model with explicit first solvation sphere and continuous bulk water was adopted.
The ligand in water adopts the conformation known from metal complexes with the BTP-like ligands.
The SO3-Ph-BTP ligand in water is surrounded by hydronium ions.
The metal ions compete with the hydronium ion for the position at the ligand center.