Element 112 shows family traits

By Education in Chemistry and Simon Cotton2007-07-01T00:00:00

An experiment by a team of Russian, Polish and Swiss scientists shows that element 112 is chemically more akin to its Group 12 relative mercury than any noble gas element

Contrary to some expectations, element 112 is chemically more akin to its Group 12 relative mercury than any noble gas element, according to the results of an experiment by a team of Russian, Polish and Swiss scientists which involved just two atoms of the superheavy element.

Element 112 (unofficially named ununbium) was first synthesised in 1996 at the Heavy Ion Research Laboratory in Darmstadt, Germany by a group led by physicist Sigurd Hofmann. Its ²⁸³112 isotope has a half-life of a few seconds, making chemical study feasible. Although element 112 is placed below mercury in Group 12 of the Periodic Table, some theoretical calculations - based on the stabilising effects of the high nuclear charge of the nucleus on the element's electronic structure - predicted it might resemble a noble gas such as radon.

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