Heavy Elements

The hitherto heaviest, officially acknowledged chemical element has the atomic number 112 and was discovered at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt. Since February 2010, it at last has a name: Copernicium, chemical symbol “Cn”, named for the astronomer Nikolaus Kopernikus. With this, the chemists’ union IUPAC accepted the name proposed by the international team of discoverers around the GSI researcher Sigurd Hofmann. In 1996, the team had targeted lead foils with a beam of zinc ions produced in the accelerator UNILAC. For a short moment, the atomic nuclei fused to form a new element – the element 112, which the scientists could identify in a highly sensitive verification process.

Copernicium is only an interim stage in the search for new elements. In doing so, the GSI focuses on various strategies. A new measuring apparatus called SHIPTRAP is capable of capturing and storing super heavy ions with a gas cell and a so-called Penning trap. Recently, one succeeded for the first time to capture ions of the elements 102(nobelium) and 103 (Lawrencium) and to measure their mass in detail. The researchers hope the same could be possible with even heavier kinds of atoms.

With another apparatus, the separator TASCA, the GSI experts recently verified another super heavy element, the element 114. The researchers could thereby reproduce a discovery from the Russian Dubna – raising the chances that the IUPAC officially acknowledges the as yet nameless element. “It is the hitherto heaviest kind of atom we have created in Darmstadt”, says GSI Department Head Dr. Fritz Peter Hessberger. “In the next few years, we will try to get to the elements 119 and 120.” An advance into absolute new territory, for these kinds of atoms still await their discovery.