In recent years, significant effort has been made at Texas A&M University to develop techniques that could be applied to chemical studies of the heaviest elements. This work has largely focused on future chemical studies of nihonium (element 113), which is predicted to be a member of group 13. Initial experiments have focused on the study of the liquid-liquid extraction of the group 13 elements using carrier-free radioactive tracers of 111In and 201Tl to mimic atom-at-a-time techniques. A variety of extractants have been studied, including ionic liquids, deep eutectic solvents, and low-transition-temperature mixtures. These compounds provide tunable properties, and a wide range of behavior has been observed. The results for ionic liquids typically show that Tl3+ is more easily extracted than Tl+, but that an oxidizing agent is required. In3+ is typically only weakly extracted. Recent work has focused on developing new surfaces that could be used to measure the adsorption enthalpy of nihonium. An “offline” radiochemistry laboratory is available for these studies, as is an additional, smaller “online” laboratory. A recoil transfer chamber with good efficiency and fast extraction has been designed, fabricated, and characterized onsite, and is available for future studies. This talk will discuss the newest results of both offline and online experiments, and give an overview of the facilities that are available for chemical experiments.

Heavy element chemistry research at Texas A&M University

254th National Meeting (2017)

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