The darmstadtium It is an ultra-heavy chemical element located in the series of transactinides, which begin just after the metal lawrence. It is located specifically in group 10 and period 7 of the periodic table, being congeners of the metals nickel, palladium and platinum.
Its chemical symbol is Ds, with an atomic number of 110, and its very few atoms that have been synthesized decompose practically instantly. It is therefore an ephemeral element. Synthesizing and detecting it represented a feat in the 90s of the last century, taking the credit for its discovery a group of German researchers.
Before its discovery and what its name should be debated, the IUPAC nomenclature system had formally named it 'ununilio', which means 'one-one-zero', equal to 110. And further back from this nomenclature, According to the Mendeleev system, its name was eka-platinum because it is thought chemically analogous to this metal.
Darmstadtium is an element not only ephemeral and unstable, but also highly radioactive, in whose nuclear decays most of its isotopes release alpha particles; these are bare helium nuclei.
Because of its fleeting life span, all its properties are estimated and it can never be used for any particular purpose..
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The problem surrounding the discovery of darmstadtium was that several teams of researchers had dedicated themselves to its synthesis in successive years. As soon as its atom was formed, it vanished into irradiated particles.
Therefore, it was not possible to fumble which of the teams deserved the credit of having synthesized it first, when even detecting it was already a challenge, decaying so fast and releasing radioactive products..
In the synthesis of darmstadtium, teams from the following research centers worked separately: Central Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubná (then the Soviet Union), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (United States) and Heavy Ion Research Center (abbreviated in German as GSI).
The GSI is located in the German city of Darmstadt, where in November 1994 they synthesized the radioactive isotope 269Ds. The other teams synthesized other isotopes: 267Ds in the ICIN, and 273Ds in the LNLB; however, their results had not been conclusive in the critical eyes of the IUPAC.
Each team had proposed a particular name for this new element: hahnio (ICIN) and becquerel (LNLB). But following an IUPAC report in 2001, the German GSI team had the right to name the element darmstadtium..
Darmstadtium is the product of the fusion of metal atoms. Which? In principle, a relatively heavy one that serves as a target or objective, and another light one that will be made to collide with the first at a speed equal to one-tenth the speed of light in vacuum; otherwise, the repulsions existing between its two nuclei could not be overcome.
Once the two nuclei collide efficiently, a nuclear fusion reaction will occur. The protons add up, but the fate of the neutrons is different. For example, the GSI developed the following nuclear reaction, of which the first atom was produced 269Ds:
Note that the protons (in red) add up. By varying the atomic masses of the colliding atoms, different isotopes of darmstadtium are obtained. In fact, the GSI conducted experiments with the isotope 64Not in place of 62Ni, of which only 9 atoms of the isotope were synthesized 271Ds.
The GSI managed to create 3 atoms of 269Ds, but after executing three trillion bombardments per second for a full week. This data offers an overwhelming perspective of the dimensions of such experiments..
Because only one darmstadtium atom can be synthesized or created per week, it is unlikely that there will be enough of them to establish a crystal; not to mention that the most stable isotope is 281Gd, whose t1/2 it takes just 12.7 seconds.
Therefore, to determine its crystalline structure, researchers rely on calculations and estimates that seek to get closer to the most realistic picture. Thus, the structure of darmstadtium has been estimated to be body-centered cubic (bcc); unlike their lighter congeners nickel, palladium and platinum, with face-centered cubic (fcc) structures.
In theory, the outermost electrons of the 6d and 7s orbitals must participate in their metallic bond, according to their also estimated electronic configuration:
[Rn] 5f146d87stwo
However, little is likely to be learned experimentally about the physical properties of this metal..
The other properties of darmstadtium are also estimated, for the same reasons mentioned for its structure. However, some of these estimates are interesting. For example, darmstadtium would be an even more noble metal than gold, as well as much denser (34.8 g / cm3) than osmium (22.59 g / cm3) and mercury (13.6 g / cm3).
Regarding its possible oxidation states, it has been estimated that they would be +6 (Ds6+), +4 (Ds4+) and +2 (Dstwo+), equal to those of their lighter congeners. Therefore, if the atoms of 281Ds before they disintegrate, you would get compounds such as DsF6 or DsCl4.
Surprisingly, there is a probability of synthesizing these compounds, because 12.7 seconds, the t1/2 of 281Gd, this is more than enough time to perform the reactions. However, the drawback continues to be that with only one Ds atom a week it is insufficient to collect all the data that a statistical analysis requires..
Again, being such a rare metal, currently synthesized in atomic and non-massive quantities, there is no use reserved for it; not even in the distant future.
Unless a method is invented to stabilize their radioactive isotopes, darmstadtium atoms will only serve to arouse scientific curiosity, especially as regards nuclear physics and chemistry..
But if you figure out some way to create them in large quantities, more light will be shed on the chemistry of this ultra-heavy and ephemeral element..
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