Flerovium (Fl), artificially produced transuranium element of atomic number 114. In 1999 scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, produced atoms of flerovium from colliding atoms of calcium-48 with targets of plutonium-244 and -242. The atoms of flerovium then decayed through emission of an alpha particle (helium nucleus) into atoms of copernicium. The longest-lasting isotope of flerovium has an atomic weight of 289 and a half-life of 0.97 second. Three other isotopes of flerovium have half-lives of 0.52, 0.51, and 0.16 second. Continue reading from Encyclopedia Britannica
The last primordial element in the periodic table — with a lifetime comparable to the age of our Earth — is plutonium, which is found only in trace amounts in a mineral named bastnasite. All elements beyond 94Pu have been produced in nuclear fusion reactions in a few laboratories around the world, most recently from an ongoing Dubna–Livermore collaboration that led in 2004 to the discovery of flerovium. Four isotopes of element 114, with atomic numbers from 286 to 289, have been produced at a heavy-ion cyclotron from nuclear fusion reactions between 48Ca ion beams and targets made of several isotopes of plutonium or curium. In 2011, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry agreed to name element 114 after the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions in Dubna, which itself took the name of its founder, Georgii Nikolajevich Flerov (pictured), a prominent Russian nuclear physicist and co-discoverer of spontaneous nuclear fission. Flerovium takes its place in the periodic table as the last member of group 14, which begins with carbon and until recently ended with lead. Continue reading from Nature Chemistry
Flerovium is named for Russian physicist Georgy Flyorov, founder of the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, where the element was discovered. Flerovium was first produced in 1998 and announced in 1999 by Joint Institute of Nuclear Research scientists. They produced one atom of Element 114. Flerovium is a radioactive, synthetic element about which little is known. It is classified as a metal and is expected to be solid at room temperature. Flerovium is suggested to be part of the theorized “island of stability.” Predicted to occur around Element 114, the island of stability is where protons and neutrons would combine to make a stable structure. Continue reading from LiveScience
