The heavy element group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has had a long tradition of nuclear and radiochemistry dating back to the 1950’s. Some of the most exciting work has taken place in the last decade (in collaboration with the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, Russia) with the discovery of six new elements - 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, and 118. By pushing the boundaries of the periodic table, we can start to answer some of the most fundamental questions of nuclear science, such as the locations of the next “magic numbers” of protons and neutrons, and the possibility of an “Island of Stability” where nuclides would have lifetimes much longer than those currently observed in the heaviest elements. We have already seen evidence of extra-stability in the heaviest nuclides, which leads to half-lives that are long enough for us to perform chemistry on these isotopes one atom at a time. Work is underway on developing an automated chemical system that will be used for studying chemical properties of elements 104 and 105. New chemical separations are being studied that can be deployed using a multi-column automated system. These experiments will provide the ground work for performing aqueous chemistry later on even heavier elements such as element 114 where the chemical properties are completely unknown. In this overview the discovery of these new elements and the chemical experiments in progress will be discussed. This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.

Superheavy element discovery and chemistry program at LLNL

249th National Meeting (2015)

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