Japanese scientists honored to name element 113

Japanese scientists have recently been honored by IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) to name the element 113.

In the beginning of 2016, a team of RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science research centers in Japan said: The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC: International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) has announced that they would have the honor to name element 113 . This news came after 12 years after the RIKEN team conducted the synthesis of this element for the first time from the laboratory and three years after they demonstrated the decay chain of this element. This will be the first element in the circulatory system named by an Asian research organization.

"For scientists, this is a much bigger value than an Olympic gold medal," said Ryoji Noyori, former RIKEN president and Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry.

Element 113 , temporarily called ununtri (Latin means "one one three" ) is a highly radioactive element that cannot be found directly in nature but must be through synthetic activity. Ununtri can be found between copernicium and flerovium elements.

A group of researchers at RIKEN by Kosuke Morita began studying ununtri since 2003 by using a linear accelerator to bombard mobile zinc ions at a rate of about 10 percent of the speed of light. . The idea was that if they bombarded enough time, some zinc molecular nuclei would decay and one would get the 113th element. Although this idea was theoretically feasible, in fact to create The 113th element is much more difficult because the half-life of the isotope element 113 produced by RIKEN is only about 1/1000 second.

A scientific group of RIKEN Research Center has the honor to name the 113th element.

The RIKEN group synthesized the first atom of element 113 in July 2004, just 10 months after they began their research program. In April 2015, the group synthesized the second atom of element 113 in the same way they did with the first atom. However, according to a report by a team of experts working with RIKEN (from IUPAC) in 2011, there was not enough evidence at the time of the existence of element 113 because of the lack of strong connections between this atom.

This is in line with IUPAC's research papers since the early 90s of the last century, in which many complex criteria need to be met to be recognized as having discovered a new element.

However, the RIKEN group also achieved initial success. Several other laboratories around the world are also working to synthesize element 113 , among them Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of the United States and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (in Dubna) of Russia. The research group in Dubna announced the successful synthesis of element 113 in 2003 and published the initial results with the Livermore laboratory in early 2004. The team discovered the decay element 113 element 115, a new element they synthesized in 2003.

The results of cooperation between these two laboratories were also rejected by IUPAC in the same way as RIKEN. Since then formed a race between research groups to demonstrate a more complete sequence of alpha decay for element 113, who was the first to succeed in naming this new element. However, despite the promising initial results of both RIKEN and the Dubna-Livermore alliance, it took a long time to succeed in creating compelling evidence for the existence of element 113 with an appropriate sequence of decay.

"For more than seven years, we continue to search for conclusive data that identifies element 113 but found nothing else. But I have no intention of giving up, luckily will smile at us again. again, " Morita said.

Then, in August 2012, the RIKEN group saw the chain of decay they were looking for. After the unified atomic zinc and bismuth nuclei of element 113 were the result of four initial alpha chains decaying but instead of undergoing spontaneous fission at that time (as happened in the experiments). 2004 and 2005 experiments) dubinium-262 (part 105) resulting from alpha decay will further decompose into lawrenci-258 (part 103) and eventually become mendelevi-254 (part 101). This is the proof that the RIKEN group used to prove that they successfully synthesized element 113 from the results of a decay chain.

This result has been recognized by IUPAC and RIKEN will be honored to name element 113 on the circulatory system . Although the Dubna-Livermore team has also achieved some success, according to the latest IUPAC announcement, the group will be recognized to name the 118 element in addition to sharing the right to name elements 115 and 117 with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA.

Morita has not yet decided on the official name of element 113, although he also thought of a name called Japonium. According to Morita, after succeeding with element 113, his team continued its research work.

"Now that we have convincingly demonstrated the existence of element 113, we plan to study elements 119 and beyond. We want to test the 7th and 4th elements. 8 of the periodic table someday to create a complete periodic table , " he said.