DARMSTADTIUM


110 Darmstadtium Ds (Darmstadt, a place)

An artificially produced, highly unstable, transuranic element with no detectable natural occurrence on Earth. In 1987 element No. 110 was reported to have been made in Russia. A nuclide with mass number 272, which decayed by spontaneous fission with a half life of about 10 millisec. The atom of element 110 produced at mass number 272 is the heaviest to date (November 1994).

An unconfirmed report of isotope 110-267 was reported in June 1994 by an Italian group at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory who bombarded a bismuth-209 target with cobalt-59 ions.

One single atom of another isotope of element 110 is reported to have been produced on 9 Nov 1994 by a team at the Unilac accelerator in the Heavy Ion Research Centre at Darmstadt. This was briefly created by bombarding a lead-208 target with nickel-62 ions, which created a compound nucleus of 110-270*, which upon losing a neutron, became 110-269. The atom of element 110 produced had an atomic weight of 269 and decayed by alpha emission within 400 microseconds. Since then, many more atoms of 110-269 have been produced, and the half life was determined more accurately at 170 microsec. Isotope 110-271, with a half life of 1.4ms, was created in a similar way, but bombarding the lead-208 target with nickel-64 ions instead.

Altogether, just four isotopes of element 110 are known, 110-267 which decays by alpha decay, 110-269 which decays by alpha decay with a halflife of 170 microseconds, and 110-271, which also decays by alpha decay with a halflife of 1.4 milliseconds. The isotope with the longest known halflife of element 110 is 110-272 with a very short halflife of about 10 milliseconds decaying by spontaneous fission.

By bombarding a target of plutonium-244 with sulphur-34, researchers are hoping to produce 110-273.

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