2009: Tennessine - The book of science

Tennessine

Russian and American scientists
collaborated in Dubna
to synthesize element 117,
the heaviest halogen.
The team obtained berkelium-249
from Tennessee and sent it to Dubna,
which is a story
in itself.
In Dubna, they bombarded
the berkelium with calcium-48
and sent the data
to the United States.
Analysis showed the synthesis
of two isotopes of element 117,
tennessine-293
and tennessine-294.
Tennessine decays to moscovium
and moscovium decays to nihonium,
which where both unknown
so they delayed their claim.
The team at Dubna
repeated the experiment in 2012,
although most of their berkelium
had decayed to californium.
Scientists at Darmstadt
also repeated the experiment
and got the same results,
confirming the discovery.

Atomic number 117

Tennessine is predicted
to be a solid volatile post-transition metal,
but its half life is too short to confirm this.
Spin-orbit interaction,
stabilization of electrons,
and subshell splitting
are theorized to affect its ability
to participate in chemical reactions.

Further work

A slight increase in the half lives of tennessine isotopes,
compared to predicted values, is grounds for hope
that even heavier isotopes would further the trend
and eventually enable the production of something useful.

Production of californium for a commercial order using the Oak Ridge National Laboratory high-flux reactor in Tennessee allowed the separation of berkelium-249 for the production of tennessine in Dubna. After successfully synthesizing tennessine and enough of the bekelium-249 had decayed to californium-249, the scientists at Dubna were able to confirm their earlier synthesis of oganesson.