When Seaborg introduced his ‘actinide’ concept in 1944, the theory played not the last role in his decision to place newly discovered elements in a second series where the filling of the 5f-shell takes place, similarly to the ‘lanthanide’ series where the filling of the 4f-shell takes place. Later on, together with O. L. Keller, Jr., he suggested an extension of the Periodic Table to even higher Z numbers calling these elements “superactinides.” The first chemical experiments on the elements at the beginning of the 6d-series, Rf and Db, performed in Berkeley and Dubna have shown that these elements are, indeed, members of the new, 6d-series and their properties should be different from those of Th and Pa, respectively. Also, the theory, having provided enormously important information on the electronic structures and properties of the actidies,  has shown that the transactinides start a new, 6d series and should belong to the transition-element groups. Thus, e.g., Sg was also found to be different from U in its compounds and to be a homolog of the other group-6 elements. Heavier elements, even though being homologs of the lighter ones in the respective chemical groups, may reveal unusual chemical behavior due to the increasingly important relativistic effects on their electron shells.<br/>     In the presentation, important and interesting works on the electronic structures of some actinides and transactinides are overviewed and peculiarities in their electronic structure caused by strong relativistic effects are discussed. <br/>

From actinides to transactinides: Peculiarities in electronic structure and properties

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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