A new element on the periodic table might be within reach
A successful new method for producing superheavy elements opens the door to creating the elusive element 120.
Scientists might be close to discovering a new element for the periodic table. Could this change everything?
Heaviest element ever created, element 120, may be created using a novel technique that researchers have found for producing superheavy elements.
Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, made this accomplishment. They declared that they had created element 116 or livermorium, a known superheavy element, for the first time using a titanium beam. Study of superheavy elements has advanced significantly as a result of this accomplishment.
Group intends to try producing element 120 by upgrading their lab apparatus & using comparable methods. Current heaviest element, oganesson, which is element 118, would be surpassed if this element is successful. Oganesson is the heaviest element ever created, having been synthesized for the first time in 2002. If element 120 is successfully created, it will be a significant advancement in our knowledge of the periodic table and the characteristics of superheavy elements.
According to Hiromitsu Haba, head of the Superheavy Element Research Group at Saitama, Japan’s RIKEN Nishima Center for Accelerator-based Science, the findings are “truly groundbreaking.” He notes that finding superheavy elements other than oganesson (element 118) is a major task. In addition to advancing finding of elements 119 and 120, fresh data from experiment will increase accuracy of current theoretical calculations.
Production of element 119 is another task for Haba and his colleagues at RIKEN. It is very hard to create superheavy elements because it takes a lot of long experiments and rare beginning ingredients. Owing to these difficulties, nuclear physics teams frequently focus on producing particular elements.
At Nuclear Structure 2024 conference in Lemont, Illinois, Berkeley team presented its findings. Along with submitting work to a scholarly magazine for publication, they have also preprinted their results for posting on the arXiv service. This work represents a promising advance in study of superheavy elements.
Nuclear limits
Superheavy elements don’t exist naturally on Earth, but scientists believe they might be found in stars. These elements are highly radioactive and quickly break down through nuclear fission, so they are not expected to have direct practical uses. However, creating new elements helps scientists better understand the Universe and improve theoretical models of atomic nuclei, including the limits on how many protons and neutrons they can hold.
The fact that the upcoming elements will form a new row on the periodic table excites scientists, according to Jacklyn Gates, head of the Heavy Element Group at the Berkeley lab. The first two elements in this new row will be 119 and 120, and researchers are hoping to find new kinds of electron configurations known as g orbitals.
Particle accelerators are used by researchers to smash ion beams into solid targets in order to create new elements. Nuclei can be fused by this process to produce elements with additional protons & neutrons. But materials they employ are becoming less & less effective. They employed actinide targets to bombard them with calcium-48 for most recent superheavy elements (114 to 118).
Reaching element 120 is difficult because it needs a target with many more protons. Making these targets is hard because they are rare and radioactive. The heaviest element they can use as a target is californium, which has 98 protons. To move forward, scientists need to use heavier ion beams.
Heavy is the beam
Scientists have tried using heavier beams than calcium-48, like titanium and chromium, to make superheavy elements, but they didn’t get any results. Witek Nazarewicz from Michigan State University noted this challenge. To prove titanium-50 beams could work, Jacklyn Gates’s team at Berkeley made livermorium-290, which was previously made only with calcium beams.
Creating a titanium beam is tough because titanium melts at nearly 1,700 ºC, over twice as hot as calcium. To make the beam, they had to heat titanium enough to evaporate ions while keeping nearby parts cooled with liquid helium. They used the Berkeley lab’s 88-Inch Cyclotron to accelerate the titanium beam and hit a plutonium target.
Elements 118 (oganesson) is named after Yuri Oganessian, who helped synthesis numerous new elements and stated that Gates’s work is essential for finding new elements. In addition, his Russian laboratory has been experimenting with beams of titanium and chromium to create superheavy elements. It was announced in October 2023 that a new isotope of livermorium could be created using a chromium beam and a uranium target, suggesting that element 120 might be produced using chromium beams. Before releasing their findings, Oganessian’s team is gathering more information.
Theoretical improvements
Data from these experiments will improve theoretical models, according to Witek Nazarewicz. One challenge is that current theories don’t offer much guidance for this part of the periodic table. The success of creating superheavy isotopes depends heavily on the energy of the ion beam used.
“If you don’t use the correct energy, you won’t see any results,” says Nazarewicz. Experiments run at the right energy are more likely to produce rare nuclei. However, predictions for the best energy to produce element 120 vary widely. The Berkeley team’s recent work provides a valuable reference point, making future experiments less uncertain.
To determine ideal conditions Gates’s team intends to repeat their titanium experimentation. Additionally, they will collaborate with Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop californium target for their research. For Berkeley lab to handle this radioactive material safely, improvements are required.
According to Gates, element 120 will be produced after 100–200 days of bombardment, or around two–three years of labor. Another specialist in the topic, Yuri Oganessian, predicts that achieving this aim might need six years of constant effort. Though unanticipated discoveries in science cannot be completely ruled out, he thinks that ongoing investigations at Berkeley and in his lab will help shorten this time.
