Critical evaluation of the chemical properties of the transactinide elements (IUPAC Technical Report)

Abstract

Names of countries given after Members' names are in accordance with the IUPAC Handbook 1998Handbook -1999. Republication Abstract: In this paper, the chemical properties of the transactinide elements rutherfordium, Rf (element 104); dubnium, Db (element 105); and seaborgium, Sg (element 106) are critically reviewed. The experimental methods for performing rapid chemical separations on a time scale of seconds are reviewed, and comments are given on the special situation with the transactinides for which the chemistry has to be studied with single atoms. There follows a systematic description of theoretical predictions and experimental results on the chemistry of Rf, Db, and Sg-their mutual comparison and evaluation. The literature cited has the cutoff date of March 1999. The more recent chemical identification of bohrium, Bh (element 107), and of hassium, Hs (element 108), should be evaluated in a future Part II of this report.

Chemistry of Superheavy Elements

“…More detailed information on this situation can be found in refs. [79,81,104] M. Schädel Table The Periodic Table of the Elements (see Figure 2 for one possible version similar to the cover of ref. [105]) is the basic ordering scheme for chemical elements and the most important and useful tool in predicting their chemical behavior.…”

“…Additional criticism against this experiment mainly came from the open question whether the observed sf tracks really originated from the decay of 263 Sg. [81,109] À4 m HF, together with "lower limit" (lower right arrow) for the elution of di-, tri-, tetravalent ions, and UO 2 2+ . Elutions were performed at room temperature with a flow rate of 1 mL min À1 from 1.6 8 mm columns filled with the 17.5 AE 2 mm particle size cation-exchange resin Aminex A6.…”

Aqueous-phase chemistry of the transactinides

“…A renewed interest in studying the chemical properties of the transactinide elements in more detail both experimentally and theoretically arose starting in the late 1980s, see, e.g., Hoffman [24][25][26], Kratz [27,28], Schädel [29], Kratz [30], Schädel [31], Kratz [32][33][34], Schädel [35], and Kratz [43] for recent reviews. This extensive series of detailed investigations was made possible by the development of new experimental techniques such as computer-controlled automated systems that have greatly improved our ability to perform rapidly and reproducibly large numbers of chromatographic separations on miniaturized columns in the liquid phase and to detect the transactinides through their characteristic α decay and preferably by αα-motherdaughter correlations.…”

Theoretical description of superheavy nuclei

“…An important part of these data was obtained by chemists (e.g. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]). This is because to study chemical properties of superheavy elements (SHE), one needs first to synthesize them and the latter is done by physical methods and brings a knowledge of physical properties of nuclei of these elements.…”