Nihonium is one of the heaviest elements of the Periodic Table available for chemical studies. In fact, there are seven known elements that have never been chemically characterized yet. Usually the limiting factors are very short half-lives and production ability of desired radionuclides. Taking into account, that chemical investigations of artificial elements can be realized within at least 5 seconds, what is sometimes too much for superheavies, the number of available not well-known elements is significantly small. There were several attempts to study nihonium behavior, but these results are not conclusive mainly because of chosen chemical conditions. The superheavy element study is usually based on properties comparison with their homologues. Thus, the light members of the same chemical group should be studied first, the procedure developed must be fast and specific for desired elements. This being said, a new class of compounds was suggested for nihonium homolog (indium and thallium) study, namely ionic liquids. These salts with a melting point below 100 °C (and usually below room temperature) provide excellent tunability of their properties, including polymerization. Our off-line and on-line studies show that these media are suitable for metal separation, especially taking thallium oxidation state into account. For example, the highest separation factor achieved between trivalent indium and thallium is approximately 10<sup>8</sup>. Interestingly, there have been zero experiments on superheavy element study devoted to their alternative oxidation states. Nevertheless, detailed analysis of indium and thallium behavior in off-line and on-line experiments with ionic liquids will be presented. An extraordinary attention was payed to element speciation and mechanisms of extraction.

Challenge of superheavy element study: On the way to understand nihonium chemistry

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

[Author Benefits](https://scimeetings.acs.org/?utm_source=pubs_content_marketing&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=0320_MCF_NPI_Launch_Spring_Homepage&ref=pubs_content_marketing)

[How to use SciMeetings](https://storage.googleapis.com/dl.morressier.com/acs/SciMeetings-ACSSpring2020-HowToGuide_M3020-Final.pdf)

[Frequently Asked Questions](https://storage.googleapis.com/dl.morressier.com/acs/SciMtng_ACSNMSp2020_FAQ_M3120_Final.pdf)

ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.