First Ever Measurements of Einsteinium Reveals Unexpected Properties
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Since element 99 - einsteinium - was discovered in 1952 at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) from the debris of the first hydrogen bomb, scientists have performed very few experiments with it because it is so hard to create and is exceptionally radioactive. A team of Berkeley Lab chemists has overcome these obstacles to report the first study characterizing some of its properties, opening the door to a better understanding of the remaining transuranic elements of the actinide series.
Published in the journal Nature, the study, "Structural and Spectroscopic Characterization of an Einsteinium Complex," was co-led by Berkeley Lab scientist Rebecca Abergel and Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Stosh Kozimor, and included scientists from the two laboratories, UC Berkeley, and Georgetown University, several of whom are graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. With less than 250 nanograms of the element, the team measured the first-ever einsteinium bond distance, a basic property of an element's interactions with other atoms and molecules.
LiveScience adds:
They found that einsteinium's bond length goes against the general trend of the actinides. This is something that had been theoretically predicted in the past, but has never been experimentally proved before.
Compared with the rest of the actinide series, einsteinium also luminesces very differently when exposed to light, which [study co-author Korey] Carter describes as "an unprecedented physical phenomenon." Further experiments are needed to determine why.
The new study "lays the groundwork for being able to do chemistry on really small quantities," Carter said. "Our methods will allow others to push boundaries studying other elements in the same way."
Journal Reference:
Korey P. Carter, Katherine M. Shield, Kurt F. Smith, et al. Structural and spectroscopic characterization of an einsteinium complex, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-03179-3)
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