Flerovium is an artificially produced radioactive element . Flerovium has an atomic number (number of protons) of 114. The chemical symbol for flerovium is Fl. Chemists place flerovium in the transactinide group of transuranium elements . For information on the position of flerovium on the periodic table, see the article Periodic table .
By late 2002, an international team of scientists working at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, near Moscow, had reported the creation of six atoms of flerovium, then called simply element 114. In 2011, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) assigned credit for the discovery of the element to the Dubna team and a collaborating team at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. IUPAC is the recognized authority in crediting the discovery of elements and assigning names to them. Element 114 was officially named flerovium in 2012. It is named in honor of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, named after the founder of the Joint Institute, Russian physicist Georgy Flyorov.
The researchers at Dubna produced two isotopes of flerovium, forms of the element with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons. The atomic mass numbers (total numbers of protons and neutrons) of those isotopes were 288 and 289.
In 1999, the team announced the production of one atom of flerovium with an atomic mass number of 289. This atom decayed after 30 seconds.
In 2000, the scientists announced that additional experiments had produced two atoms of flerovium with an atomic mass number of 288. The researchers produced all three atoms in a device known as a particle accelerator (see Particle accelerator ). They bombarded plutonium, which has an atomic number of 94, with calcium, whose atomic number is 20.
In January and May 2001, scientists reported further evidence for the creation of flerovium with an atomic mass number of 288. That evidence was the result of successful attempts to produce an element with an atomic number of 116 (see Livermorium ). The researchers produced three atoms of element 116, later named livermorium, that had an atomic mass number of 292. Each atom decayed radioactively by emitting (giving off) an alpha particle, which consisted of two protons and two neutrons. Due to the decay, each atom became an atom of element 114 with an atomic mass number of 288.
The scientists estimated that the half-life of isotope 288 is 1.9 seconds—that is, due to radioactive decay, only half the atoms in a sample of isotope 288 would still be atoms of that isotope after 1.9 seconds. To determine an isotope’s half-life with much accuracy, scientists must study many atoms of the isotope. When only a small number of atoms have been detected—as in the case of this particular isotope—they can obtain only an approximate value of the half-life.
