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Vol.
25 No. 5
September-October 2003
IUPAC
Wire |
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News
and information on IUPAC, its fellows, and members organizations
See also www.iupac.org/news |
Element
110 is Named Darmstadtium
On
16 August 2003 at the 42nd General Assembly in Ottawa, Canada,
the IUPAC Council officially approved the name for the element
of atomic number 110, to be known as darmstadtium,
with symbol Ds. The proposal was recommended by the
Inorganic Chemistry Division. In 2001, a joint IUPAC-IUPAP
Working Party (JWP) had confirmed the discovery of element
number 110 by the collaboration of Hofmann et al. from the
Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung mbH (GSI) in Darmstadt,
Germany [Pure Appl. Chem. 73, 959-967 (2001)]. The
most relevant experiment resulted from the fusion-evaporation
using a 62Ni beam on an isotopically enriched 208Pb target,
which produced four chains of alpha-emitting nuclides following
the presumed formation of 269110 + n. [S. Hofman et al.,
Z. Phys. A350, 277-280 (1995)].
bombardment
of lead with nickel ions
20882Pb
+ 6228Ni
>269110 (0.17 ms)
+ 10n
Since
then, the JWP has re-examined the discovery of 110, in view
of the obligatory re-assessment brought on by revelations
at the Berkeley [Y.A. Lazarev et al., Phys. Rev.
C54, 620-624 (1996)] and GSI laboratories [S. Hofmann
et al., E. Phys. J. A14, 147-157 (2002)] of
some apparently fabricated or partially modified decay chains.
In its soon to be published report, the JWP re-endorses the
confirmed synthesis of element 110 by the team at GSI led
by S. Hofmann.
In
accordance with IUPAC procedures, the discoverers at the GSI
were invited to propose a name and symbol for element 110.
They proposed the name darmstadtium, with the symbol Ds. Thus
continues the long-established tradition of naming an element
after the place of its discovery.
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